


The Marriage of Heaven and Hel

by misreall



Category: Loki: Agent of Asgard, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Cruelty, Dubious Consent, Dubious Consent Due To Identity Issues, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Jötunn Loki, Light BDSM, Loki Angst, Loki Does What He Wants, Loki Lies, Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Sex Magic, everything is hurts and is also beautiful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-15
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2018-10-19 10:20:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 20
Words: 73,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10637868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misreall/pseuds/misreall
Summary: Another AU of my already AU series, Loki and Nora's Infinity Stone Playlist.  This story starts towards the end of the first story in that series - Hel is Being Other People http://archiveofourown.org/works/7181495/chapters/16300475 - with changes after the events of chapter 11.  It probably won't make too much sense if you haven't read that, or at least the summary of that story.





	1. The Marriage of Heaven and Hel

_“Well, I would be happy to give Miss Walsh all of the considerations you have outlined, but as of forty-five minutes ago she put in her two weeks. I guess there are few things you don’t know, hmmmm?”_

_“Oh, I knew she was intending it,” he lied with an even broader smile, “But I thought she was putting it off ‘til Monday. You know women, so flighty.” He spoke the last word with a little shake of his head and a humorous scowl._

_Loki stalked down the hall back to the office, his scowl no longer humorous. He caught a glimpse of himself in the glass of one of the conference rooms and realized how ridiculous he looked, Eddie being furious, but he didn’t give a damn._

_Who did she think she was, abandoning him in this dreadful place? He had considered her an ally, he would have considered her a friend if he had need of such a thing. A thing that only the weak and pitiful found use for._

_Clearly he had let Eddie’s disgusting form infect his mind. For the first time Loki considered that his reasoning had been flawed from the beginning. Nora was clearly a very poor example of a human. Easily fooled into thinking he was nice, and good, and needed her in some way._

_She was also disloyal, recklessly moving on without a thought to all of those she was leaving beh_ -

“Hi.”

Loki almost tripped over Eddie’s feet when Nora pivoted around the corner of the hall from where she had clearly been awaiting him.

“Nora.” He spoke curtly and scowled at her. No! Honest emotions were a fool’s move, he should be lulling her into a false sense of security so he could more easily strike at her later.

“I, um,” she was fidgeting, which was decidedly un-Noralike. And rather charming, he thought, and then cursed himself for it.  “I just put in my two weeks’ notice.  I was looking for you to tell you, and then I was going to wait until tonight.  I put in my two weeks’.”

“You just said that,” he spoke cautiously. What was her game here? “Why did wish to inform me of this?”

“Because…” Nora looked into his eyes, and started to speak very quickly, “because you’re part of why I’m leaving.  I mean, I hate it here.  Everyone hates it here.  And I’ve been looking for a reason to leave for a while, but it’s scary, and then I started to like you, and I think you like me.  I mean I know I’m not your type.  I’m not blonde.  Or especially…” she started to make a gesture near her breasts and then dropped her hands, “anyway, do you want to go to dinner tomorrow night?  On a date?  I was also going to wait for the two weeks to be up, but fuck it, they aren’t going to fire me now.”

There was a terrible feeling in Eddie’s chest, and for a moment Loki feared that the mortal carcass he was entrapped within was about to collapse.

“You are asking me on a ‘date’?” he asked, incredulous. “Why?” 

“Most of the usual reasons, and probably a few others. You’re not so usual.”

The terrible feeling was growing, as if something was desperately trying to batter its way out of Eddie’s chest.

Nora took a step towards him.

He took a step back and hit the wall.

“But I’m so unsightly,” he muttered, as she lowered her mouth to his.

“I don’t see it that way,” she whispered. And then she kissed him.

 

_Three years later_ …..

Nora threw a raincoat on over her pajamas, slid on a pair of flip-flops and stormed out of the house. She supposed she shouldn’t be so angry, at least Eddie wasn’t trying to drive home drunk.

No, he was just calling her again. These days she was less his wife than his Uber.

She leaned her head on the wheel for a second, and was honest with herself. She had never really been his wife that much.

It was late for a week night, even in Chicago, so it only took her fifteen minutes to get from her house to the Lone Wolf, where she was not surprised to see him not waiting outside for her, like he had promised he would be. And she had left her fucking phone on the kitchen table, so she had to go in after him. 

Nora pulled around the corner to park and made a gentleman’s bet with herself. Eddie

would either be sitting at one of the tables near the front, eating a utility dog and complaining about the government to the pretty hipster girl he had just bought a Japanese craft beer for, or he would be sitting at the far end of the bar, a few unknowable stains on his tie, finishing a whiskey sour made with well-liquor.

“Nora!”

Answer number one!

Eddie’s always messy hair was especially bad, and there was tear in his collar, and he had lost some of the already precarious buttons that had been barely holding his shirt closed over his swollen stomach when he left for work that morning. So another fight.

“Sidira, this is Nora! Nora I have spoken of nothing but you this entire night!”  Eddie said, grandly gesturing to the cute thing with short, dyed black hair, wearing silver combat boots and a plaid dress that reminded Nora of one she used to have.

The girl snorted into her drink and gave Nora an ironic, “Hey.”

“Tell her, I command you! Tell Nora that I have spoken of nothing but her!”  Eddie said.  When he was loaded he tended to have delusions of grandeur.   Even after years of hearing it, she still couldn’t help but find the combination of his Prairie Home Companion accent with his cod Arthurian speech pretty hilarious.

Wearing thin, but hilarious. As was his constant insistence that when he was out and flirting with other women she was all he talked about.

“Yeah, it’s ok, Eddie, c’mon, I’m parked around the corner and if I get a ticket you’re going to have to pay it,” she grabbed his arm.

She felt him tense under her hand, and she knew that he was probably going to blow up.

Which was also wearing thin.

But, as ever, she found him unpredictable. Instead of jerking free he nodded grandly to Sidira, “My lady, another night perhaps.”

SIdira snorted again, “Sure. Catch up with you sometime.”

As they left Eddie leaned close to Nora and whispered, “She reminds me of what you used to be like.”

Nora didn’t even flinch this time.

 

Loki laid Eddie’s bulk in back of Nora’s car.

From the stiff way she held herself away from him as they had walked through the quiet dark, he had said something hurtful to her again. He wondered what it was this time.  Had he insulted her appearance in some way?  That was as common as it was hypocritical and false.  She was so lovely.  Worn down, exhausted from life, and from him, but lovely. 

(Sometimes when he forgot himself and treated her with kindness she still gave him that bright-eyed smile that made him ache for her.)

Perhaps he had commented on her education. Or her dress sense.  Or any of the endless number of faults he found in her when he was inebriated and most aware of his own revolting state.  Then it was his pleasure to play a more vicious version of the game he had been playing for years.

The drive Nora away game.

 When sober he was a more subtle player.  Avoiding her as much as he could while living in the same home.  Ignoring most of the simple things she asked of him and then doing the few that he did with an exhausted ill-grace.  Waiting a beat too long to respond in kind when she said, “I love you,” and pretending not to see her wither a little more each time he did so.

In a just and decent universe Nora would have thrown him bodily from her life. But she was too stubborn, too certain that things could be fixed between them, never understanding that he didn’t want them fixed.  He wanted to be gone from her, to find a quiet hole to crawl into with as many cheap intoxicants he could gather and find his way to death or, maybe his home.

By the time they arrived back at her house, Eddie’s body had sobered up, and before Loki could stop himself he spoke, “Nora, I am sorry for what I said at the bar. I did not… I am sorry.”

She turned and looked at him, giving him a sad smile, “Its ok,” they both got out of the car, quietly closing the doors. She walked to stand close to him, “You could make it up to me.”  She sounded flirtatious, a little hopeful.

Loki held very still, not wanting her to see the gulp that wanted to form in Eddie’s throat, not wanting her to see how hard he had become from just those few words.

He patted her condescendingly on the arm. “Yeah, I have an early morning.”

Her features froze, and she nodded. “Right.”

For once, Loki was not trying to hurt her, not trying to find one more weapon to defend himself against her warmth, her affection. He just knew that, as with almost every time he tried to be with her, Eddie’s body would betray him. Or, 

more honestly, he would betray Eddie’s over eager body, _hating_ the sight of any part of it touching Nora. 

That hate had turned into flaccidity early in their “relationship” (a weaselly MIdgardism that replaced passion with measured thought, and that turned his stomach to even consider.) No matter how deeply he would begin craving Nora’s sweet body he would find himself unable to perform. 

For a time he had attempted to satisfy her in other ways, but Nora refused him after a while, clearly demeaned by his apparent lack of desire for her. The eager sensualist Loki sensed in her also withering away due to him.

Maybe he should just end this life and be done with it. It would be less exhausting, at least.

“Hey!”

Eddie and Nora both turned to where Sidira stood in the alley. She looked a bit… different. 

For one thing, she was rather taller than she had seemed at the bar. As well as quite purple.  And holding a sword.  All of which was also true of her three black clad companions.  “Nora, go into the house,” he shoved her in the direction of the back yard.

“What the fuck?” She stumbled and landed on her knees.

“GO! NOW!”

Startled, she appeared to listen to him.

“Thought I’d catch up with you sooner rather than later. Laufeyson,” Sidira called out, gesturing with her blade, “Just so you know, Nora, you really were all he talked about tonight.  Thought you might want to know that before he- oh, she ran away.  Disappointing.”

Oh, glorious day! Finally someone was here to end his suffering.  He could feel the smile come unbidden to him, as he stepped towards her, “You must be one of Thanos’ endless bastards.  Took daddy long enough to find me, girl.”

She snarled, “My father didn’t find you, I did!” She thrust a thumb at her chest, “Once I bring him your head he’ll recognize that I am his true child, not those weak creatures he has adopted!  And trapped in that … that disgusting form you can do nothing to stop me!”

Thanos would definitely not thank the girl for killing Loki, he wanted the slow privilege of it for himself, of that there could be no doubt. But Loki did not correct her, but instead opened his arms, “Come for me, delightful child,” he whispered to her like an eager lover.

She was startled and before she could act, Nora spoke from the yard, holding up the phone she had gotten from the house, “The police are on their way, whoever you are. You and your other friends need to leave and go trick or treating somewhere else.”

“Nora!!” He tried placing himself between her and the others, his heart suddenly racing, salty nausea flooding his mouth. Sidira charged him. He threw an arm up to block her blow from taking his head. The angle was wrong, so there was a crack of bone and a sheering feeling as she peeled through his coat and skin and 

muscle, leaving a flap of tissue and bare white bone handing like a loose mitten around his hand.

Loki grabbed Eddie’s arm, falling to his knees, screaming and trying to pull the skin back up, the agony making black spots flood his vision as he tried not to swoon.

She whipped the blade up, then down through his shoulder, deep into his lungs where for a second he tried to breathe around the sharpness and then Eddie died.

Loki, however, did not.

There was a tearing pain, as his body reasserted itself, running through form after form. Female, male, Jotunn, Asgardian, wolf, panther, dragon, more.  Faster and faster who he was, who he had been, all of his potential selves, each ripping itself into his sinew, his blood, all within a tunnel made of blinding green light and roaring noise, that extended from the palace of the Realm Eternal to the broken blacktop of a Chicago alley where the garbage hadn’t been picked up for a few days.

Finally, after a thousand years or a few seconds, he stood.

His hands. How he had missed his hands!  He ran them over his naked, overly sensitized new skin.  His chest, with his heart pounding under his touch.  His hair!  His splendid, magnificent hair!  He gripped the long tresses, wrapping them around his fingers.  Perhaps he had missed his hair most of all.

No he hadn’t.

He was about to visit that part of himself that he missed the most when he heard a quiet, stunned, “um.”

Ah, yes, the battle.

“Apologies, Thanette. And minions,” he said to his stunned attackers, forming his armor around himself.  “Now, where were we….” Loki spun to the black-clad form that was coming up behind him, sweeping the legs out from under his attacker while grabbing his arm, so when he fell his shoulder dislocated with an audible pop and a scream. 

Loki stomped down on the fallen foe’s ribs, laughing at the xylophonic series of cracks. “May I?” he asked politely, taking the sword the dying man had dropped.

It was quite a good weapon, actually. He stretched his arm out and flicked his wrist to both get a better look at it AND slice into the neck of the second minion that ran at him.  The other man’s carotid artery split like an overcooked noodle, spraying blood in a thin arc.

Sidira and the last of her lackeys rushed him at the same time. She had the better form of the two, as should be expected of anyone sharing Thanos’s blood, so Loki killed her first, pivoting around her as she came within sword reach, and simply using his greater size to slam her into her companion’s blade, which he had been really holding too low after all.

Loki took mercy on the poor fellow and removed his head before he could comprehend that his last act had been to take his commander’s life.

He shook with adrenalin and joy.

“Oh, my god…” a faint voice came from behind him.

He dropped the blade and turned, his chest heaving with need.

Nora stood with her back pressed against the little wooden fence that separated her yard from the alley, clutching her raincoat around her stomach, self-comforting with a tight embrace. The foolish girl had grabbed a piece of fallen fencing that she now hugged to her, and had been coming to his aid.

Her skin was pasty and oily with sweat and shock. She seemed so small now, so fragile.  Her long, slender neck, her huge, fascinating brown eyes, her tender hands, all made him feel a wild need to take her somewhere quiet and lonely where he could stand guard over her.

Which she would never allow.

Loki waited for her to run. To throw the piece of wood she held at his head.  To scream in horror at least, as the man of her nightmares was now revealed to be her husband.  He made himself cold, he made himself sneer, waiting for her hatred.

Why was her mouth swollen, her lower lip bleeding?

“Where’s Eddie?” she eked out, her hands dropping weakly to her sides, her eyes rolling back as she started to fall. Loki caught her as she fell, shocked.  Yes, things had been a bit exciting, but Nora was not the fainting kind.  Also, she was covered in something sticky.

Then he saw she had not been holding herself for comfort. She had been holding her organs in, and now a long loop of her intestine fell into his hand and both of them were sheeted in blood.

“HEIMDAL! HEIMDAL!  PLEASE!” he shouted for mercy from one of his oldest foes, “My sins are not her fault!  FATHER!”

The police finally arrived just in time to see a massive, still smoking sigil burned into the alley, and to clean up the bodies.

 

Loki had dreamt of the Bifrost so many times. The last time he had stood upon it he had watched Thor break the unbreakable bridge between worlds in order to save his enemies and he had allowed himself to plunge to his own desired end.

But he lived and the bridge was whole again, and Loki could not have cared less.

He carried Nora as carefully as he could, one arm clutching her to his chest while his free hand slipped in her blood and viscera as he tried to hold together the massive wound that had torn her apart. The fact that he could still hear her thin breath was a tribute to her magnificent stubbornness.

Heimdal’s chamber gleamed golden before him. The sentinel stared at him, as impassive, as immovable as ever.  “She will not survive to reach the healers, your highness.”

Normally, Loki would have been surprised by the honorific, but he barely registered it, “Yes, she will.”

“Her heart is stopping, I can see it fail.”

“No,” but Loki knew it was true. He had killed her.  He loved her, he tormented her, now he had killed her.  Not the first time he tried in New York, but he had managed it eventually.  He fell to his knees, cradling her against him, and shuddered.

This time, when he went to his own death he would not fail. Maybe he would even allow Thanos the honors.  He would do the job with sufficient zeal to satisfy even Loki’s self-hate at this moment.

“You highness,” Heimdal spoke again. He had left his plinth, and stood at Loki’s side, holding something out to him, “From your father.”

One of Idunn’s apples, glowing like Heimdal’s eyes.

Loki moved like a snake, snatching it and lowering Nora to the ground. Her mouth was open as she struggled to take in her last breaths, and he held the fruit over her mouth, squeezing it to pulp and juice, “Drink, sweet one.  A few drops,” he begged the unconscious woman. 

At first she did not move, and his heart wanted to stop, too. A drop for sweat dripped from his temple  and the salt on her broken mouth must have stung, because the tip of her tongue flicked over her lower lip, taking a bit of apple with it..

She breathed just the tiniest bit easier. “Good girl,” he crooned to her, “A little more now,” he forced more golden nectar forth. 

Tenderly he coaxed her, stroking her throat with a bloody hand, murmuring encouragement, until he had reduced the apple to skin and core and her velvety skin was whole and unmarred. He gently stroked where the wound had been.

“She will need time to sleep. To heal, Prince Loki,” came the calm voice of an older woman.

When he looked up, dazed, he saw that several healers had arrived, and a unit of einherjar as well.

“We can take her now,” the healer said, motioning for the other to step forward.

“No!” He calmed himself and stood with Nora in his arms, sneering, “The princess is mine to care for,” and nodded to the guards, refusing to look back at Heimdal.

As they walked, the healers rushed to keep up, explaining to him that Nora was healed, but her Midgardian nature would take time to adapt to the demands of her renewed body, and that the energy she had lost would take time to restore itself.

Loki tried to not show surprise when they took him to his chambers rather than the dungeons.

An old friend waited there.

“The AllFather commands you to await his indulgence,” Sif said, watching with her hand on the hilt of her sword as he placed Nora on one of the low divans in his receiving room.

“I have been awaiting his indulgence for nearly four years, Sif. At least now I can do so in some comfort,” he looked at his gore-covered hands.  “Unless you have something new to add I need a bath, as does my wife.”

Sif scowled, clearly trying to come up with a witty, scathing retort. If he waited for her to think of one she would be there all day.  He needed her to go, he need to attend to Nora.

Loki leaned close, leering, “Unless you would care to join us?” 

When she had left, Loki took Nora to his bathing chamber. He disparated his own clothing, and knew he should have done likewise with hers, but he found himself instead undressing her by hand. 

“I am truly a monster,” he thought to himself. “Who would take pleasure in this?”  He stripped her of the blood-soaked and crusted clothing, jostling her as little as possible, knowing that while he would not wake her, he could affect her dreams.

Once Nora was naked, he carried her into the warmth of his pond-sized bathing pool. Gathering a handful of soft, juniper-scented soap, he cleaned her blood from his hands, and then began on her.  He carefully took a cloth to her face, wiping away bits of apple and his tears.  Her wet, full lips parted slightly at his touch.  As if begging for his kiss.

No, he told himself.

His cock did not seem to hear his thoughts, and Loki could feel it stir and awaken where it rested against Nora’s hip. His eyes closed, all he need to do was shift her, just a touch….

For the first time in his long life, Loki intended to refuse its wants and needs. Even though, after such an extended separation from it, that felt cruel indeed.

He washed her long, coffee colored hair, and when he scratched and massaged her scalp she sighed and nestled closer into his touch. He willed himself to not pull fistfuls of it. Instead he rubbed the base of her skull and eased the deep crease of worry that perpetually existed between her brows, making her sigh deeper, breathier.

It was unfortunate that as a Frost Giant freezing the water around his penis would do nothing to calm its insistence.

Her elegant neck was next, and he wanted to lick along it. He settled for soft swipes of toweling, and then, unthinkingly, trailed his fingertips along that path and dipped them into the water pooled in the hollow of her throat, where he wished he could sip.

Arms were tenderly washed next, and he allowed himself to suckle the tip of each finger, then kiss her palms.

Squeezing his own hands into fists, Loki attempted to take command of himself when he propped her back against his chest and soaped her lovely breasts. Her nipples were tight buds, and he found himself, unable to resist circling them so very softly while nuzzling her ear.

Nora’s breath hitched in her sleep.   A sweet, musical moan escaped from her, and her hips swiveled slightly against him.  Loki moaned with her, but in pain rather than pleasure.  

Finally, after caressing her torso, her legs, her feet, massaging and fondling under the guise of washing her, he parted her thighs to clean her there as well. She was slick and radiantly hot.  Loki stopped moving, trying to give they both a chance to regroup she made the saddest, smallest noise, and gritting his teeth he continued.

She smiled, slow and wicked, her dream clearly a good one, pushing herself against his fingers.

Resisting temptation was not one of his godly powers.

Nora floated in darkness, feeling warm, happy, and even safe, for the first time in longer than she could remember. Unable to move on her own, the darkness moved her as it willed, and she wanted nothing more.

It touched her everywhere, gently stroking away years of strain from her muscles. The tension leaving so abruptly her muscles ached.  Then the touches stopped, and she moaned with disappointment, now aching for the darkness in another way.  But clearly it was just another lover who didn’t want her.

Then it began again, this time more demanding, murmuring to her now. Not words she could make out, but a voice of silken blackness working itself into her.  It edged her legs further apart and a long, cool finger began to run idly between her folds, one tip just barely skimming from clit to opening, while the darkness wrapped itself more firmly around her.

It was maddening. It seemed to never end.  Just back and forth, back and forth.  No faster, no harder, just enough to tease and stir her up more and more.  And there was nothing she could do about it.  Tears of frustration formed in her eyes, and the darkness licked them up with a shudder of pleasure, still whispering words that she couldn’t make out.

After an age the finger stopped at her opening, just circling there over and over, then dipping slightly in and out, nowhere near to what she needed.

“Shall I satisfy you, princess?” Finally, words she could understand.

But she couldn’t answer! Nora tried.  She tried to make her mouth work, to say anything, but she stayed silent and still.

“Now, now, I asked you a question, and it is terribly bad manners not to reply,” it t’sked in her ear.

The darkness bit her! Sinking its teeth firmly into her shoulder, just painful enough to jolt her partway to consciousness, but not quite all of the way. 

“Yes….” Nora was able to gasp out.

“Good girl,” it purred against her skin, gliding over her, mouth and touch everywhere. Now, more aware, she writhed and grabbed at her no longer ephemeral lover, finding wet skin over hard muscle, a smooth chest that she rubbed her face against as he positioned himself over her, plunging in with one stroke, the size of him knocking her breathless for a moment.

Tender, solicitous kisses rained over her mouth and jaw, while she was viciously, exquisitely taken, pounded into with a needy intensity that she wished she could meet. Instead she could only wail and throb around his tongue and cock. 

He shifted, draping her thighs over his arms, and started to slam into her, “Wake up, Nora,” he commanded.

She didn’t want to. The real world was nothing but disappointment and sadness.  Reality could fuck itself, she only wanted this dream.

But the darkness wasn’t having it, and demanded, each word emphasized with an unforgiving thrust, “Open. Your.  Eyes!”

And then he did something to her, something inside of her, and she came in an explosion of wet, her body arcing up, grabbing his shoulders to keep herself from flying off the surface of the world, her hands tangling in black hair.

“Beautiful,” she heard him gasp through his own peak.

Nora’s heart crumpled. She pushed and beat against him, wildly trying to get away.  In a cruel betrayal by her own body, the movement sent her into another shattering orgasm, falling to the ground as she road it out.  Before her head could hit the marble floor a big hand cradled the back of her skull, gently easing her down. 

“Careful, princess. You are still weak.”

The devil smiled at her, his green eyes knowing and unkind.


	2. Never Apologize, Never Explain, and Never Say Never, it Makes You Look Stupid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things go from bad to a different kind of bad

It would have been comforting for Nora to have lost her mind. Or that she was having a terrifyingly lucid and detailed nightmare.  Or that she had died in the alley when that … it had to be an alien, had cut her open and she felt her insides in her hands.

No one should have to know what their own intestines feel like.

Anything would have been more comforting that the truth that she was alive and in hell.

The devil was still in deep in her, his hands on either side of her head so he could not just look at her face, but examine it.   He cocked his head and smirked at her, and she felt her own head shift, too, her gaze mirroring his. She knew she should have been pushing at him, trying to get away, but she was as frozen as a mouse before a cobra. 

He was beautiful. She knew that already.  He was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.  When the footage from Stuttgart had aired she had watched it obsessively.  His cruel mouth, the high cheekbones that his cool gaze practically had to peer over, the hair like a moonless night. 

The utter contempt he radiated.

Finally, he gave her a mocking peck on the nose, and stood. “I always suspected you would come quite nicely if you had the right assistance,” he tossed back over his shoulder as he skirted the gigantic sunken tub that filled most of the cavernous room to find a towel and start drying his hair.

Nora couldn’t move. Her heart was racing, her head was too heavy to lift, when she tried to put her hands down to lever herself up they slid on the slick floor, and her fingernails scrabbled on nothing. 

Loki strolled back over to her, still naked, and looked down at her. “Your muscles are still transforming and healing, is my guess.  And you’re …” 

He seemed very far away. Maybe because he was so tall, she though idly as she slid back into unconsciousness.

“Nora!”

That was funny, she thought as she disappeared back into the darkness, he almost sounded scared.

 

Loki fell to his knees and pressed his head against Nora’s chest. Her heart was going far too fast and her breath was thready and shallow.  Shock.

Yes, why would his poor girl be in shock? She had only watched her husband die, almost been killed herself, and then woken up with her battered form being fucked by a madman. 

He picked her up carefully and carried her to the chaise that sat next to the bathing pool, covering her with several of the bath sheets, knowing warmth was important. He also vaguely remembered something about elevating her feet and did so.  While shock would probably not be fatal to her now that she had been given one of Idunn’s apples, she would still be uncomfortable for some time.

He also formed clothing around himself, his own clothing for the first time in so long, imagining her reaction if she opened her eyes to his nakedness again and crouched next to her, stroking her long hair away from her eyelashes.

What had he expected? Nothing.  Expectation requires thought and his brain had been unengaged since he had started touching Nora’s body.  He had needed her.  The years of being married to her, of being close to her warmth and to never be able to touch her, seeing her so close to death, and then her little, sad moan when he had tried to be good.

He had tried. Just not for very long.

When she had come undone in his arms it was the happiest moment he had had since….

Since he had learned the truth.

It could have been an annihilating happiness, one that left nothing behind it, that only left the possibility of a future, but for one thing.

It had been him, and it had been her. And when Nora realized who it was who was pleasuring her, he had seen that kill something in her.  Which had killed something in him.  Something he did not know was in him to kill any longer. 

Hope.

Then again, he thought, I cannot miss what I did not realize I had.

 

When Nora woke up, in spite of her best efforts to not, she was still in the same room but now laying on a fainting couch covered in blankets. She sat up, clutching them to her chest like a Victorian spinster. 

He was gone.

The lights were dimmer that they had been, and on a small table next to her there was a large golden wine glass filled with what looked like water, a pitcher of more, and a small plate of some kind of pastries, decorated with sugared flowers. They were adorable, and looked out of place in the austere majesty of the room. 

But they were something Nora could concentrate on. They were understandable.

She gulped down the whole goblet of water, suddenly aware of how dry she was, and then another, and was about to eat one of the cakes, her body craving sugar and fat, when she saw a note had been left as well.

_Drink all of the water and eat at least three of the cakes before attempting to rise._

_I will know if you do not._

_Then you may come to find me._

_Your husband_

 

The metal cup crumpled to slag in Nora’s grip.

She jumped and tossed it away from her. How that hell had that happened? The thing weighed a ton, there was no way she should have even been able to dent it, let alone do that!

What had he done to her?

Anger was good. Anger was better than anything Nora had felt in a long time.  Better than the constant feeling of inadequacy and loneliness she had felt with Eddie and all of his problems.  Better than the fear and confusion (and brief but overwhelming happiness and bliss, much better than that, she told herself) since she had woken up.  Anger was clean and sharp and strong.

She could become a big fan of anger.

Picking up the crushed goblet, mangling it further, and making a sarong out of one of the silk blankets, she went to find ‘her husband.’

After going through room after room – a gorgeous bedroom cum temple, a well-stocked library, some kind of receiving chamber – Nora found him in a dressing room, preening before one of a number full-length mirrors, he quickly cycled through a number of green and black costume after another, clearly enjoying what he saw.

Nora wound up and threw the mass of metal in her hand at his head as hard as she could.

She missed again.

Having seen her in the mirror, Loki had taken a lazy step to the side, letting the missile fly over his shoulder, shattering the glass, busting through the back of the frame, and taking a chunk out of the marble wall beyond it.

He spun on his heel, smirking at her, “Some one of these days you may actually manage to hit me, pet. I do not look forward to it.”

“What is the matter with me? Why… how did I do that?” Nora pointed to the broken piece of wall.

He sauntered over to her, “Always so practical, aren’t you? No questions about us,” he hissed the word into her ear, his hot breath caressing and his sharp, vicious tone piercing.  “So unimaginative.  So lacking in wonder, just concern for your… enhanced state.”

“Wonder? You expect wonder?”  Nora lunged past him and picked up one of the longer pieces of glass from the broken mirror, slashing at his stomach, her stomach clenching in anticipation, even as her mind was horrified at what her body was doing.

He grabbed her arm, spinning her so she was pinned to him, the top of her improvised dress falling down. He squeezed her wrist.  Nora swore she could feel the bones grinding, “Let it go!” he gritted in her ear.  Everywhere that their skin touched felt like fire.

She held it tighter, and he squeezed harder. Nora barked in pain but refused to drop the glass.

“You’re hurting yourself, Nora,” he whispered now, and as the adrenalin died out of her system she could feel the cut deep into her hand and the blood running down her arm.

She let go of the shard, crying out, “Let me go, I need-“

Loki drew her arm down so her gashed hand was in front of her face, “Watch,” he hushed.

Before her eyes the bleeding slowed, and stopped, the pain faded, and her flesh knit itself closed.

“Welcome to near immortality, pet.”

 

It was onto that tender, martial scene of bloodshed and broken furniture that Sif arrived.

Loki did not have time to explain anything to Nora, so he wrapped his arms in around her middle, her own hands covering her breasts with a cry. He wished that their hands could trade places, and his cock twitched with happiness when she backed further into him, unconsciously moving away from the other woman.

Ah, that was good. Very good.  Loki smiled pleasantly at his former lover over his wife’s shoulder.  “Yes?” 

Nora was very still, no doubt humiliated to be found in the midst of the wreckage, half naked and blood streaked in his arms. He recognized that telling her she was not the first woman that had been in this position would not improve matters for either of them.

Instead, showing a pity he did not understand, he kissed her cheek, whispering in her ear, “She cannot see your state of undress. Look at us.  Look.”

He turned his head with hers. The reflection in the remaining mirrors showed Nora clothed in a simple black gown with a green belt, styled much like the garment he currently wore.  Other than Nora’s clearly distressed expression not matching his smugness, they looked for all of the world like a happy couple caught in a moment of trysting.

She slumped against him in relief for just a second. It took all of his will to not offer her further comfort.  To tell her that no matter how she felt about him, he would never allow his wife to suffer humiliation or be belittled under the gaze of Sif or any other Asgardian.

“Let go of me, you piece of shit.”

Which eradicated any impulse to kindness Loki might have had. He did let her go, taking the blanket with him.  He started to drop the illusion, but for an unknowable reason could not bring himself to do so.

Sif cleared her throat. Even she was not unperceptive enough to tell that there was something very wrong here, “The AllFather will see you in his chambers after the evening meal.”

Loki turned his smirk to Nora, “Goody. I know you’ll be lonely for me, pet, but I will try and make haste.  The AllFather does tend to drone on, however.”

“He wishes to see both of you,” Sif added, bowing a bit to Nora.

Loki could hear Nora’s knuckles crack as she balled both of her hands into fists, “Oh, I want to see him too, the fucker.”

Loki burst out laughing at the look of horror on Sif’s beautiful face.

“Oh, how wonderful.” He said.

When the warrior maid had taken a hasty retreat, Loki turned back to Nora, dropping the illusion, walking around her in a slow circle. It took all of his strength not to fall down on his knees and nuzzle her pert little ass.

“Dining would be wise. You are far too boney.  You always have rather been.  And perhaps an actual gown for meeting daddy, much as it would delight me to have you walking the halls of palace naked and it being our little secret.  You’ll hate my father almost as much as I hate yours.”

Nora crouched down, gathering the blanket in her shaking hands. When she looked at him her eyes were dull and terrible.  “Why me?  What did I do to deserve this?  You?”

“I once asked myself the same thing all of the time. And I can only give you the same answer I came to, oh, ages ago,” he crouched next to her, his heart twisting behind his conceited smile, “You must be cursed.”

 


	3. Bad Luck Relies on Absolutely Perfect Timing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nora has a hard time being immortal, Loki has a hard time with everything else

Then  –

Eddie was jittery. That was what Loki told himself, anyway.  Eddie’s inferior human nervous system was overriding Loki’ usual clearheaded thinking and so Eddie’s hands shook as he shook hands with the judge, the witnesses (Marissa and Mr. Choe), and nearly with Nora after the “ceremony” ended. 

Nora laughed and took his hand anyway, giving it a firm shake. “Yes, good day to you to, Mr. Rasmussen.” She looked so lovey, in spite of their plebian surroundings.  Her hair was pulled up, in a neat style for a change, and the vintage green velvet dress of her aunt’s made Loki feel ever so slightly closer to the wedding he might have envisioned himself.

Even Eddie looked as close to presentable as he could manage, with a properly tailored grey suit and a decently Windsor’d tie.

Marissa wore a black business suit and a pair of $700 shoes that she had used her “responsibilities” as witness to talk herself into. She and Nora towered over both Eddie and Mr. Choe in all of the pictures. 

Mr. Choe wore his usual brown pants and loose golf shirt, but he had found a sweater and left his fishing hat at home. It occurred to Loki that he once must have been a very handsome man.

As they stepped out of the Daley Center Building, Dre, Kelsey, several of Nora’s out of town friends, and her brothers and parents waited to throw flower petals and bird seed at them since rice not allowed. The lack of the more traditional, and therefore powerful, fertility ritual did not especially bother Loki since he had no intention of burdening Nora with a child that was half Eddie.  Just the thought of it was wilting….

Nora’s mother Eileen was so tiny she actually had to stand on her tiptoes to hug Eddie and press a kiss on his cheek, “Oh, I couldn’t imagine Nora finally meeting _someone_. Not after that business with that Patrick.  I never liked him.  You seem so much more….wholesome.  It must be your accent!”

Loki looked at the pretty little woman and wondered if she had enough imagination to understand how ridiculous what she had just said was. “Well, when she proposed, I was fairly shocked myself, Mrs. Walsh.”

The woman gave him a look as if trying to decide if he was joking, but when she started to laugh and he did not join in she took a step back and shot a confused looked over to Nora, who was having her picture taken with her brother Sam and his enormous dog who was holding her bouquet gently in his mouth.

“Hey, hey, what’s this? Trying to steal both of my girls in one day, mister?”  Nora’s father was clearly where she got her height and appearance from.  They shared the same pale skin, coffee dark hair, and enormous, pellucid brown eyes, but there was more than a touch of the glad-handing con man about Mickey Walsh that could not have been farther from his daughter’s character, even if they shared a familial gift for showmanship that Nora used rarely and her father clearly survived on.

Mickey took Eddie’s hand in what he clearly considered a bone-powdering shake, and leaned down a bit to whisper to his new son-in-law, “You know you just aren’t anywhere near good enough for MY little girl, don’t you, Ed?”

While Loki agreed with Mickey’s basic premise that Eddie was in no way good enough for Nora, he was infuriated and appalled that this sly charlatan, who had been base enough to abandon his own child when she might be a minor inconvenience dared to now lay claim to that same daughter?

Loki smiled with Eddie’s mouth, sliding his thumb down to a specific spot in the other man’s wrist, and pressed it hard while bending it at an oblique angle until there was a barely audible popping sound and Mickey froze in agony.   His face was red and brow beaded with sweat, and he tried not to cry out in pain, clearly embarrassed.

Loki whispered in his ear, “No, I’m not. But she’s MINE now, nonetheless.”

 

Now –

Loki stared at Nora, a baleful look on his face.

“Eat something,” he said through gritted teeth, his fingers tight on his wine glass.

Nora refused to look at him, or even the lavish table of food set out for them in his bedchamber.

She hated herself for thinking of it in those terms. She tried to make her mind say “bedroom,” but it was clearly a “chamber,” with all of the grandeur and cold glamour that implied.  A massive bed/altar draped in furs, a polished marble floor dotted here and there with elaborately embroidered rugs in muted colors, a fireplace large enough to roast a boar, and floor to ceiling windows overlooking a beautiful city of gleaming spires of glass, strangely colored stone, and metal that she couldn’t recognize. 

The perfect setting for barbarian space prince/wizard/demigod/supervillain.

Her thoughts were racing hard enough to make her nauseated. One second she was trying to pretend that Loki wasn’t Eddie, that she hadn’t for some reason (and heaven forfend that the motherfucker tell her why) been married to the man who had tried to conquer her whole planet, nearly killing her in the process.  The next second she was trying to figure out if she could make it to the door and figure out how to find the golden statue (she only had the vaguest memories of this) that had zapped them here and see if she could get it to zap her back.  Then they would careen to the fact that she had basically been dead, or the next thing to it.  Then to how she had woken up…. and back again.

But none of that was why she wasn’t eating.

She wasn’t eating because her body wasn’t exactly listening to her right now.

After their visit from Sif (who seemed to hate Loki about as much as Nora did, so good for her) Loki had pulled out a number of green robes from a chest and tossed them at her, “Here, put on one of these until I make you something appropriate for my… for seeing my father. Do not keep me waiting, pet, I am famished.”  And left the room.

Nora sat on the floor of the dressing room for a time, trying to get her thoughts in order, but finally knowing that nothing good would come of sitting around naked, she put on one of the heavier robes, tearing one of the sleeves off in the process. She succeed in putting another one on, only to have that strength suddenly leave her, and so found herself barely able to walk in the thing.

It went on like that until she ended up in a too light for her liking silk robe, her body aching with the surges and ebbs of energy and strength that raced through it.

She found Loki in his bedchamber, drinking wine and brooding at the view out of the window. At he had changed clothing again, wearing a black leather tunic and pants that were tucked into knee-high boots with an esoteric system of closures, all covered by a green suede coat trimmed in gold. 

Nora hated how the sight of him affected her. And thanked god that she felt so terrible or it would probably be a lot worse.

She needed to get out of here.

“You are terribly slow, pet. I was very close to searching you out and dragging you here.  Be glad I did not, I am sure your scalp would ache for days,” he said, without bothering to look at her.  “Sit.  You will be more yourself after you have eaten.”

He dropped into one of the chairs at a large table that was near the fireplace. It was covered in platters and bowls.  Loki didn’t bother to wait for her, but began to fill his plate.

Nora’s immediate impulse was to not do anything he said, but she also knew he was right. She needed to eat.  At least that was one of her thoughts.  The truth was the way her brain raced she couldn’t hold any thought for very long, which was why she had ended up finding him.   It was something her body had been able to do without having to consult her mind.

 Moving as slowly as she could make herself, so as not to accidently damage the chair, she took her seat and managed to drink a little more water.  That was good.  It was simple.  It was delicious.  It was something she understood.  For the length of that drink of water her world was sane again.

Then she saw Loki giving her an amused sneer, “My. One might almost be jealous of the ardor with which you took that water in.”

When she set the glass back down she broke the cup from the stem.

Loki t’sked at her. “You are no doubt the clumsiest princess in the history of Asgard.  And also no doubt it will be seen as part of your human charm,” he said pleasantly, turning his chair to look at the fire while he ate.

After that there was no way she could manage. She bent a knife in half, then a piece of bread seemed so heavy her arm trembled just getting it to the plate.  At one point she showered herself in grapes.  At least she caught one of those in her mouth.

It was indescribably delicious, but she restrained herself from moaning, barely able to imagine the scorn she would receive for that.

Finished himself, Loki turned back to her and narrowed his eyes.

“I told you to eat.”

It took her a few minutes to gather herself to speak, “I-“

Nora started to explain, but he spoke over her.

"Don’t be a child, Nora. You have always been the most sensible and dully pragmatic of creatures, so being petulant ill-suits you.  Eat and then we can see about garbing you properly for meeting the king.”

Petulant? He thought she was being petulant? And why would that be, one of her wandering thoughts wondered?  What could she possibly have to be petulant about?

She wanted to snipe back at him that as the God of Truculence he hadn’t a leg to stand on. That if he thought she was being childish, then he better get a load of how she was going to act going forward.  And so on, but she couldn’t.

She couldn’t even cross her arms at the moment, she felt so weak. And she was a little afraid that if she did she would squeeze herself so tight she would pass out.

So Nora sat there, feeling wrong and sick and hungry.

He ignored her for a while, pouring himself another glass and leaving the table to fetch himself a book. When he was seated again he glared at her empty plate, astonished she had not obeyed him.

“Eat something.”

Nora shook her head just a little.

“If you do not eat immediately I will be forced to punish you like the child you are behaving like.”

Nora considered what that meant, and then leaned forward, managing to rest her arms on the table, and rasped out, “I’ll cut your hands off,” she gasped out, her lungs feeling compressed. Cut his hands off?  Where had that come from?  Nora was appalled by both of them.

“What is the matter with you?”

She turned her head hard enough to wrench her neck. Loki had sprung up from his chair and was next to her in a second, “I can’t …  I can’t.” 

“You can’t eat?”

“I can’t… anything. Think, eat, anything.”  She tried to lift the plate to show him and it crumbled to shards from the pressure of her fingers.

“Your body is reacting strangely to the apple,” he said, and she was horrified to feel him lift her up and then sit back down with her on his lap. “Between the radical change in your physiology, and the loss of blood you sustained, it makes a kind of sense.  But you must eat.”

His body was harder than the chair, planes of leather-clad muscle holding her in place.

She started to say, “My mind is wrong, too,” but when she opened her mouth he pressed a piece of cheese to it.

“Eat, pet,” he said coldly, “I will not have the inconvenience and bother of saving you be for naught.”

Since she couldn’t say, “I really wish you hadn’t troubled yourself,” or anything else, she ate the cheese. It was smooth, and softly flavored, but with tiny veins of tanginess and she had never tasted anything like it.  Unable to control herself she moaned.

“Here,” his breath stirred the hair hanging over her ear, tickling her neck and making her shiver. His fingers pressed a bit of rare meat to her tongue, and he removed them slowly.  He tasted of wine and salt.

Nora was able to chew without breaking her teeth, and mineral quality of the meat and the light char on the outside of it was perfect, like the finest steak ever grilled.

This time she didn’t even try to stop the little hum of pleasure she made.

“You are heavier than you appear,” Loki grumbled, shifting her so she was turned sideways on his lap, cradled between his knees. “Now we will try some bread,” he said in a negligent tone.

It went on like that for a time. Nora eating, finding herself relaxing and feeling better as she took in more food, her thoughts still racing but no longer shouting at her.  Finally, Loki seemed to feel she had eaten enough.

“There is something wrong with your thoughts as well, yes?” He asked, placing her back on the chair, which seemed less comfortable to Nora than it had before. For the first time since she had woken with him hovering over her, with him in her, Loki sounded maybe just a bit kind.  Certainly his voice was softer.

She didn’t like that. She wanted him to be a bossy bitch.

But that tone was too much for her, and Nora felt herself tear up. She could only nod.

He crouched before her, putting a hand to her cheek, his intense green eyes staring into hers, “My poor little wife. So much pain for one day,” she wanted to move away from his touch, but couldn’t.  “Let me,” his voice was a croon, “you need more rest, so much more rest.  Close your eyes, that’s it, let me help you.  Go to sleep now.  Sleep for me, princess….”  

Nora felt herself slump forward and be caught in strong arms.

 

“The All-Father wishes your wife to attend him as well, Loki,” Fandral said while affixing the magic restraining shackles to Loki’s wrists.

He was relieved that the enormous erection that he had sported for the last hour since feeding Nora and putting her in this bed had finally subsided. If he had not moved her away from it while she sat on his lap he had no doubt it would have actually catapulted her ailing body onto the table.  He had been worried he would have to change into his older armor with the long piece in front if it did not ebb before his meeting with his father.

“Well, we all want so many things in this life, do we not? My princess is exhausted, and I will not have her health put at further risk just for the non-existent pleasure of my father’s terrible company.”

Any of his brother’s entourage would have been scandalized by his speaking of the king that way, but Fandral had the closest to an active sense of wit of the dull lot of them, and so merely gave a head shake and a grin, and then gracefully bowed, gesturing to the troop of einherjar waiting to escort him.

Another of the warriors would also have tried to disturb Nora’s rest, but Fandral was too much of a womanizer, sorry, gentleman, to do so.

“So, is Sif picking up Odin’s ravens from the vet? Fetching the royal pizza, perhaps?”  Fandral just gave Loki a confused look.

Oh well.

Loki was surprised that they did not turn towards the throne room. It occurred to him that it might still be in ruins after the Malikith’s attack, but no, Odin would be certain to restore the trappings of his power before looking to the repairs of anything else in the palace or the capitol at large.

Instead he was taken to the royal retiring chambers.

Loki steeled his expression. One of the last times he had been in that room had been with his mother just before his ill-fated attack on Jotunnheim, when he was still king, and she was able to look at him without sorrow.

So many regrets.

Like wasting the Destroyer on Thor. It had taken so much time, and caused Odin to wake.  He should have just destroyed Jotunnheim, THEN sent the Destroyer after Thor.  What had he been thinking?

Loki entered alone, finding his father likewise. Odin looked little better than when last they had met.  His eye was not so red, but he still looked old.  Not the old of mountains and oceans, as he had always looked to his sons, but the weary oldness of a man who had lost more than he had known he had to lose.

But he was still the All-Father, and the power of it flowed from him.

“Hello, majesty,” Loki said, offering as neat of a bow as he could manage with his wrists bound.

“I am still your father, Loki.”

“Certainly as much as you ever were,” he agreed.

“Where is your wife?”

“Sleeping. She’s been through quite an ordeal.  Is going through an ordeal, actually.  I am an ordeal, if you think about it.”  Loki stepped over the top of one of the divans in the sunken room and then let himself drop into it, “I thought it was more important that she rest up for the fun she and I are going to have going forward.  Besides which, I do not think either of us want any witness to our tender reunion.  Father.”

“I looked forward to meeting the woman who finally won the heart of my son. You were always cold in your passions before.”  Odin moved with the slow, ponderousness of a dire bear to sit across from him, “And picky.  How many marriages did your mother arrange for you?  Only for you to disarrange them in the most absolute ways possible.”

Loki felt a clawing in his heart, “I am not here to reminisce about mother,” he snarled. “Any way, it is my understanding that you treated Doctor Foster with less than kingly courtesy when Thor brought HER here for aid, I would not subject Nora to such treatment any sooner than I must.”

“Thor is heir to the throne. He cannot give his heart where he will.”

“Whereas I am a war trophy, so who cares who I wed?”

“You!” Odin started to shout, and then visibly controlled himself, “You have ever been impossible to satisfy. If this human girl does that, then so be it.  What you and your brother see in these Midgardians I cannot understand.”

“Mostly that they are not … never mind that. At any rate Nora is not so wonderfully human any more.  Certainly not after your generous and unexpected gift.  Why would Odin waste one of Idunn’s honeyed fruits on a mere mortal?  Especially one with such poor taste as to have feelings for your scapegrace son trapped in a shaved ape costume?”

Odin was silent for a time, and then rose and went to a window overlooking the courtyard of the palace. Loki followed him.  The nightly feast had spilled, as it did nightly, into it, and they watched as the revelers courted and wrestled, danced (badly for the most part) and drank, told tall tales and showed old wounds.  The same as every night of Loki’s life, and Odin’s, and Bor’s before him, and back until the dawn of the gods.  The Realm Eternal as it would be until the end.

“I need your help, Loki. Ragnarok is coming.  It comes too soon.” 

“And I care because? I have seen too much of the universe, father, to care greatly about the fall of one Realm.  And by the time the others fall behind it, I will be an old man, sitting in a comfortable chair with a bottle of brandywine, enjoying the show.”

“This fall will be fast, and hard, and will take the realms in a storm of fire and blood. It will take all of this,” he gestured to Asgard, “it will take Midgard, the elves, the dwarves, the Eternals, your friend Thanos, even.

“Yes, I know of that, too.”

Loki was grateful for the lack of pity or sympathy in his words or tone.

“And it will take your brown-haired bride, too.” Now Odin’s voice rose, the roaring voice of a warlord, the precise words of a king, “And if you will not assist me in trying to stop it, I will make sure it takes her first, and that you are there to watch her burn, to hear her scream, to know every second of her suffering, and know that you did nothing to prevent it!”

“You old bastard! You were planning this all along, weren’t you?  WEREN’T YOU?”  Their faces were inches apart, red and furious. 

Odin smiled slowly, shaking his head, “I had planned to bring you here, to find a way to persuade you, to reason with you. And I have no doubt I would have failed.  But then, last evening, as I had nearly given up, Heimdall saw you attacked.  We both heard you cry out for mercy for your…. Your Nora.  The way you treated her before, I had not known that you loved her, my son.  That you loved her enough to beg for her on your knees, when you would never beg for yourself.  And then I knew I had you.”

 

Loki stared down at Nora as she slept in his grand bed, the bed he had so often dreamt of having her in. She twitched now and then, her muscles still healing in her sleep, a frown creasing the place between her brows.

He sat beside her and just watched.

She looked so different to him, but he knew it was not a change in Nora, but rather that his own body wanted her much more than Eddie’s had.

Yet more evidence of Eddie’s vast inferiority.

“Rest up, my sweet, sweet girl. I am paying a high price for you, and I _will_ be repaid.”


	4. The Truth is Always the Most Effective Lie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nora is feeling better, Loki is acting worse.

Now-

Nora woke up in the darkened bed chamber. She was stiff and sore and she needed to go in the worst way. 

She pulled up and sat on the edge of the enormous bed, her feet dangling like a little girl’s would. She was still wearing the silk robe, but it was rumpled and stained with sweat, and she could smell how badly she needed a shower. 

Then she realized that she was able to think one thought at a time and concentrate on it.

When she stood up, her body felt like her body again.

The great carved door opened a crack, and someone slipped in. Nora knew it wasn’t Loki.  She was fairly certain that he only entered rooms by swinging the doors open all of the way so that he would be framed like a picture and everyone would have a chance to enjoy his magnificence before he came in and ruined everything.

Nora grabbed a – candlestick? Maybe.  Something like a candlestick that sat on the bedside table, “Who’s there?”  She tried to raise her voice, but she was dry enough that it came out as a rather sinister croak.

There was a crash of something dropping, “Oh, no!”  She heard a girl’s voice cry out, “Apologizes, your highness, I –“

There was a slamming noise, and light flooded into the room, and yup, there was Loki framed in the doorway, or at least his silhouette, hair flowing, looking very dramatic. He made an equally dramatic gesture and the rest of the huge room lit up, making Nora blink and cover her eyes, hiding from both the light and from the sight of him.

Because now that her mind was back to being hers she remembered just how real this was.

Before she closed out her terrifying reality, she had a glimpse of a very, very tall girl, maybe a teenager, with long red braids and dressed like an extra from a very violent production of _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ , looking at Loki with fear, the tray of food and drink that she had dropped making a mess of what looked like a Persian carpet.

“Your Highness, my apologies to you and her Highness! Please forgive my clumsiness, I was startled and it will never happen again.”

“Go, wait until you are called for,” she heard Loki’s voice, dark and soft, then she felt him wrap his hands around her wrists and pry her hands from her eyes.   He was towering over her, an eyebrow raised in amusement.  “Good morning, pet.  Did that stupid girl wake you?  I can have her killed if she did.  Otherwise she is supposed to be your chambermaid, but as you are both equally graceless she may be an unwise choice.”

How tall was he? Somehow her garbled thoughts had missed that he wasn’t just taller than she was, but that he would actually loom over her even if they were standing.

Nora tried to pull her wrists free from him hands, but even as much stronger as she felt she was he held her easily. When she tried to put her feet on his legs to give herself more leverage he rolled his eyes and put a knee on her thighs to hold her in place, “Now, none of that.  Here I am showing husbandly concern and this is the joy I receive of you.

“And no such luck, my little pet. It wasn’t all just a bad, scary dream.” 

Salt flooded her mouth, and she wondered if she had enough in her stomach to be sick, or if she would just have the dry heaves.

His tone was mocking and light, but Nora could feel bruises forming on her wrists, and her head ached. So in addition to being the object of her relentless nightmares for over a year, he was also a huge dick.

“I have to pee, so unless you want to have to replace your bed,” she managed to gasp out.

He let her go so fast he almost fell himself. “Of course, you’ve been asleep for three days.”  Three days?  She had been sleeping in the presence of a psychotic would-be despot for three days?  “I’ll see that the wench brings you another tray.”

 The room he directed her to was not entirely unlike a bathroom, and it had something that was hopefully a toilet, since Nora used it as one. 

When she returned to the bedchamber Loki had salvaged a piece of fruit from the mess on the floor, something like a peach, and was lounging on the bed finishing it off, his fingers glistening with nectar. When he saw her return he threw the pit into the fireplace, “If you were a different woman I would assume you wanted to bathe before eating, considering that you are repulsive at the moment, but I know you better.”

He was dressed in a deep green tunic of some very soft material and black suede leggings. He had removed his boots and his narrow, elegant feet were propped up on the pillow she had been sleeping against.

Her new muscles not only ached from inactivity, but from being ridged with anticipation. Every time he moved she jumped a little, which he clearly found hilarious.  Nora pulled the robe more tightly around herself, “When can I go home?”

Loki looked at her like he might a mouse that had stood up on its haunches and requested he step aside, confused and amused in equal measure. “You are home, Princess.”

“I mean my home. My real home.  MY house.  People will be worried.  About me, about Ed-,” it occurred to Nora she would never see her husband again. There was a tangle of grief that found its way to her throat, in spite of knowing that his very existence had been a lie. 

She had been in love with that lie, even when she tried not to be. “Why?”

“Why can you not go home? Why do we live this life of suffering and humiliation?”  At that moment the girl returned, carrying another, larger tray.  “Excellent.  You eat, and I will explain how my father destroyed both of our lives at once.  Very efficient of him.”

The girl scurried, carefully but still scurried, to put the tray on the table where they had eaten before, and then gave a deep bow. Loki waved her out, “Eat, eat.”

While Nora fed herself on the things that she recognized on the table, not tasting any of it, Loki poured himself a rather enormous goblet of wine and began to tell the Saga of the Two Deaths of Loki Laufeyson and His Lesson in Humility.

“Of course, MY punishment had to contain another level of mortification and defeat than Thor’s. Thus Eddie, every hairy, repulsive, stuttering inch of him,” paced a bit as he spoke, hands moving gracefully to accent his points.

Even though she was afraid to interrupt him, Nora was too appalled not to say something.

“I thought there were supposed to be Nine Realms. Can’t your father use another one for his dumpster fire offspring?  Like, shouldn’t he have sent Thor to Jotunnheim?”

He stopped in place, a considering look on his face, “Like?” He shook his head in disgust, but went on “It would make a kind of sense, but they knew him, you see. Lauf- The Jotunn king would have had each of his strongest warriors take one of Thor’s limbs and then he would have made a wish.  Only Midgard is ignorant of the larger universe it is a part of.  Or it was.”

“You fixed that,” Nora finished eating and now she needed a drink, unfortunately when she tried to get herself a glass of wine Loki made a motion and it turned into water.

“You are still healing. Water first.  I would never let it be said I do not take care of my things.”

Nora looked at the water with a frown, “So you really are the Anti-Christ.”

He shrugged, “You’ve seen my horns.”

Then he stopped and smiled at her very slowly, his eyes slightly unfocused as if remembering something, “Stuttgart….”

Her heart was either going to stop or explode, “I need to,” she started to say bathe, but remembering where and how she had woken up the first time, her body flushed hard enough to hurt, like prickly heat, “to clean up. I know the way.”

She tossed down her napkin and fled the room, followed by a staccato laugh, “No hurry, my pet.”

 

Then-

“C’mon, tell me a story. Something really bad,” Eddie drew out the “aaaa” in bad, and Loki felt himself grin inside, the thin, foxlike leer that he got when he knew something fun was about to happen.

“No, no!” Nora said. She was a little drunk, just a touch, just enough so she was leaning on him at bit where they were seated in the secluded corner of Maria’s Package Goods, in the semi-secret tavern in the back.  

Loki had shared with her an edited version of one of his earlier sexual exploits, changing the three K’Lanti girls with their levitating abilities to three aerialists from Michigan.   While he had to trim a few of the details, based on there physical impossibility for Eddie, he still managed to share the most lurid parts, and he could tell that Nora was somewhat aroused by them. 

“That is deeply unfair, sweetheart. Now tell me some _thing_ ,” she started to open her mouth, but he lifted a finger, “but not about Patrick.”

Nora took another sip of ale and bit her upper lip, clearly thinking.

“OK, but this is pretty terrible, actually.”

“I’ve never seen you blush before. You must tell me.”

She put her crossed arms on the table and motioned for him to lean in as well, so she could speak softly, her warm, hoppy breath blowing across his lips, “You’re probably going to judge me about this.”

He laughed, “Oh, I for one have no business judging anyone.”

“Alright. So this is from … it’s from before the Battle of New York.  Just a few days before,” Loki held Eddie’s features perfectly still, but even hearing those words together made him want to be ill.  Every time he considered that Nora could have died that day, that he nearly killed her that day.  “It was after the footage from Stuttgart, you know which footage I mean, not the thing with the eye, but the part with _him_ and the crowd and… anyway…”

She took another drink. Nora never said Loki’s name.  Only once had it crossed her lips, when she first told him the story of her experiences during the Battle of New York. 

He had spent so many idle moments remembering his name in her voice.

“Well, that next day and night, you know what it was like. People were crazy.  Aliens, and gods, and who knew what was going to happen, and I was … I was anxious.  Fuck that, I was horny.”  She laughed and didn’t notice that he was quiet, now that she was ready to talk it spilled out of her, “So I put on a short skirt, and a tight blouse and I went out looking.”

Eddie took a huge swig of the Lite swill he favored, “You were looking because of….?”

“Because of _him_ ,” she whispered the last word a bit drunkenly and then laughed, “Because.  Of.   _Him_.  Isn’t that the worst?  I mean I didn’t know what was going to happen, I didn’t know that just the thought of him was going to be enough to send me into a kind of panic attack for a while.  I just knew he was _beautiful_.”

Her voice grew dreamy and wistful, and Eddie wondered if he could punch through one of the wooden walls of the bar.

“I hit a bunch of bars, not really drinking. Just looking, you know,” she elbowed him, and he gave a nervous laugh, “And then I found him.  Not _him him_ , but my _him_ substitute.  He was tall, and had black hair.  Normal black hair, not like you know who, and tall, I said that, right?  But normal tall.  He was wearing this long coat, and from the back he was… he was good enough. 

“I was also pretty sure that I wasn’t the only one that was liking him that night. For reasons.  But I had the best legs, so I won.  If you can call that winning.  I had to keep telling him to shut up, because he was ruining it.  He didn’t have the voice either.  Not even close on that.  I let him fuck me bent over the sink in the bathroom, and I kind of kept my eyes blurred so I just saw the top of his head, and a bit of the hair, and I could pretend.

“Truth was I was so ready by that point the resemblance didn’t matter that much anymore. It was all going on in my head, and I came so hard.  I had to put my hand over my own damned mouth because I didn’t want to scream a _name_.  I even bit myself.  I still have a scar, see?”

She held out her slender right hand, and he noticed for the first time two small scars on the top and bottom of the webbing between her fingers and thumb.”

Eddie gulped down the last of the beer, trying to keep his throat from closing up, “Right. That’s a story.”

They were quiet for a while. Finally, a bit sheepishly, Nora said, “Um, did you want more details, or was that-“

Before she could finish, Eddie stood up, his legs unsteady, “I think we need shots.”

After that night nothing was ever really right between them again.

 

Now –

While Nora bathed, she tried to figure out a few things.

Why wasn’t she babbling in a corner in shock? Probably because reality had been so kerflooey these last years she just had to accept it.  This was real.

How was she going to get out of here? Appeal to Odin, maybe?  And didn’t that sound more kerflooey than anything else?  If he said no maybe she could appeal to Isis.  Or send a petition to Apollo.  They were probably somewhere out here, too.

What did he want with her? And why?  Nothing good.  And no fucking idea.  She just hoped it would be quick and painless.

Great. That was all clear as mud as Claire would say.

“Um, Highness?” It was the red-haired girl again, looking spooked as she entered the decadent room filled with clouds of apple and wood-smoke scented steam.  The only other soap she had found smelled like Loki, all frozen spruce trees and cold stone, so forest fire smelling skin and hair it was.

“Nora. Don’t call me anything but Nora,” she called out.  The girl was carrying a large pile of cloth.

“But His Highness –“

“You work for me,” she looked the girl in the eye, nodding and smiling, hoping to encourage her a bit. She sighed, “But you’re terrified of him?  Its ok, be honest.”

“Yes, um, ma’am?” She asked timidly.

“Better, for now. And you are?” Nora grabbed a towel and started drying off.  Nudity clearly didn’t bother the girl, but if she was a servant she probably saw naked people all of the time.  Naked gods, she corrected herself.

“Yngvild, ma’am,” she bowed.

“Really? Sorry.  I mean, that’s pretty.  What is that?”

“Clothing, from His Highness. There is more in your dressing chamber, but I thought,” Yngvild didn’t finish her thought. 

“You thought I might want some clothing now?”

The girl nodded.

“Yes, thank you. Good thought,” Nora wrapped herself in one of the vast towels, “So where is Himself?”

“Um, in his workroom. No one goes in there.  Sometimes, they say, they used to say, that His Highness would spend days in there.”

“Perfect.”

Nora worked her way down through stacks of Asgardian schmatta, each gown less suited to her than the last. Finally she settled for a very simple black gown, similar to the one she had appeared to be wearing the other day, and that pooled on the floor and barely hid her breasts.  Found a gold belt that looked like it could be a trophy for the Valhalla Wrestling Championship and used it to hike it up enough so she could walk.

At least the leather slippers that Yngvild had brought were a good fit.

Not sure where to go or what to do Nora wandered around, aware that Loki’s rooms were vastly larger than her entire house. No wonder Eddie always felt cooped up.   And everything was beautiful, and sensuous - the fabrics lush and soft, the walls subtly curved, the light a muted gold. 

Yet there was a coldness to it, not of temperature, but of style, that of someone who had strong feelings about comfort, but wanted to show as little of themselves as possible.

Finally, she made her way to the small library she had seen before her big nap.

It alone was cozy as well as seductive. The two small couches near the fireplace were velvet and covered in pillows and throws.  Both were slightly worn and more inviting because of it.  The piles of rugs underfoot weren’t shown off like those in the bedchamber, but were just for the pleasure of walking on barefoot she imagined.  The wooden shelves were of a dark red wood with a patina of age that glowed slightly golden, and were crammed past bursting with every kind of book imaginable and many that weren’t.

It took Nora twenty minutes to find, on a bottom shelf behind a matching leather bound books that smelled of incense and seemed to chime when she touched them, a selection of titles in English. She sat cross-legged on the floor and pulled them out. 

A King James Bible. A translation of the Elder Edda.  A red spiral notebook scribbled over in Sharpie in pentagrams and runes, with “The Grimoire of Nico Minoru – Stay Out Bitches, or Be Curse’d!” scrawled on the inside cover.  A well-worn paperback edition of _Jane Eyre_.  A dictionary from 1927 with a lace-trimmed handkerchief that still smelled faintly of neroli, holding the page that started with ‘calumny.’  A history of the Thirty Years War.

Nora took _Jane Eyre_ and the Grimoire to one of the couches.  She wasn’t a bitch, so she figured she was safe looking at it.  And maybe there was something in it she could use against Loki.

She kicked off her slippers and curled up.

She was a few chapters in to Charlotte Bronte, just reading, ““I am not deceitful: if I were, I should say I loved you; but I declare I do not love you: I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world,”” when Loki opened the door and stood in it looking at her.

Nora choked back a laugh.

“What is so funny, pet?” He asked, closing the door firmly behind him and slowly walking towards her, “Besides you making free with my things and my rooms.”

“Nothing.” She closed the book and set it aside.  “I can go.  Just send me home.”

Loki sat beside her, spreading his long legs wide enough to force her to give up most of her space, one of his bare feet sliding over one of hers, cold and smooth. When she tried to get up he put a hand on her breastbone, holding her still.   

It was up for grabs if she hated it more that she suddenly felt more alive than she had in years, her whole body warm and alert, or that she audibly gulped. He gave her a cruel smile and spread his fingers, his pinkie trailing back and forth over her very hard, left nipple. 

She gripped the velvet cushion she sat on and almost shredded it.

“Can’t. Won’t.  Either.  You choose that which you prefer,” he spoke in a bored voice.  He picked up the grimoire by a corner, tossing it behind them, “Since you don’t appear to be on fire I am guessing that you have not perused this yet.”

“You aren’t either, so no, I haven’t. Why won’t you-,” her voice was husky.  Nora hated her body at that moment.

He spoke over her, “Because even if you were somewhat too good for Eddie, and nowhere close to good enough for me, you are still mine and I never give ANYTHING up, so ...”

Nora wasn’t sure what part of that statement made her heart hurt.

“Now, you have a choice. I can bend you over this settle and take you from behind like when you let that cheap, pitiful imitation fuck you like a whore in a public urinal.  Or we can go to my very comfortable bed.”

As he spoke he moved his hand and cupped her left breast, still teasing the nipple, and then leaned over and suckled on it through the heavy fabric of her gown. It was … before Nora could form a thought she moaned, and then felt him grin.  He turned and suddenly his other hand was under her skirts, rubbing the thin material between her legs, while kissing his way up her neck and jaw. 

Before she could think about what she was doing, Nora thrust against his hand and grabbed a handful of his black hair, twining in around her fingers. One slender tip circled her already throbbing clit.

“Swollen and wet and moaning. Like a whore it is,” he whispered over her mouth, so his breath kissed her.

But his lips did not.

Instead, he lifted her off of the couch and then draped her face down over the back of it, her hair skimming the ground, her hands trying to find purchase on the back of the sofa, gripping a fur that was hanging over the top.

Nora knew that she could fight him. That maybe if she got lucky she could make it to the door, or even the hallway, but he would only drag her back.  And she would only be pretending to want to get away.

Because no matter how she dreaded him, the maker of her nightmares, the destroyer of her normal life, the thief of her hopes, the liar who pretended to be her man, she still wanted him.

And the same desperate want that had sent her out on the night after she had first seen and craved his arrogant, vicious beauty, now made her pliant. He pushed her thighs apart and thrust three of his fingers deep into her, giving Nora no chance to get ready, and pumped.  It hurt.  It was perfect.  She wanted more.  After several hard thrusts, where he just lightly brushed a fingertip over her g-spot making her shudder, he pulled away.

Maybe he would fuck himself right out of her system. She braced herself for him to force his cock into her.

“Your cunt is so comely, your best feature by far,” Loki snickered, and then she felt him slither from the seat behind her, and before she could turn to see his hands wrapped around her thighs and the curled tip of his tongue ran down the seam of her cunt and then nestled her clit within it, gliding it back and forth, stopped now and then to gently suck on it and take a deeper swipe between her lips.

Nora’s whole body went limp with need. Her arms shook so hard she couldn’t hold herself up and so just fell over the back of the couch like a blanket.  There were low, whimpering noises that she didn’t recognize as coming from her.  Two of his fingers found their way back into her now, but with a delicate, incremental insinuation, and when he was fully within she found she was gently fucking herself on them while he simply stayed still and let her drive herself the rest of the way crazy.

It went on forever. Nora wanted it to go on forever.  The hypnotic, glacial ratcheting of her need, the sound of the fire, the obscene noises of Loki’s mouth and her wet, the pulse of her cunt trying to pull him further into her. The blood rushing and making her lightheaded as her head remained upside down.

After a year or five had elapsed, he withdrew his fingers, even as she tried to keep them there, well outside of the realms of shame, and with one hard, final swipe of his tongue, his mouth left her, and then he was behind her on the seat.

“Now, pet, who’s cock do you want deep in that splendid hole of yours?” He caged her body with his, and his wet hand, smelling of her, wrapped around her throat, lifting her by it. 

She could feel his long, long cock stroking between her legs, the feel of the ridge of the hea catching on her hypersensitive clit making her writhe in his arms.

“Yours,” she managed to rasp out.

“No, no,” he gave a careful squeeze, “you know what I want. Give it to me, and then you can have what you need.”  He nuzzled her jaw, the affection of the gesture making her feel weak and uncertain.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You do, Nora, you know what I mean.” His tongue stroked the rim of her ear and he rubbed the pulse in her neck, tightening his grip just a touch more.

She could actually feel the wet dripping out of her and onto his cock.

“Loki…” she said it in a voice that was little louder than air, “I want you, Loki.”

He snarled in her ear and then impaled her. What little air she still had exploded out of her with the force of it, and he let her drop back down as he took her hips with both hands, fucking her hard and fast, pushing her forward so her clit rubbed on the silken fur.

Holding on to nothing, Nora could only let him use her.

Her first orgasm ripped through her with a scream as the pleasure took her whole body in shudders. When she finished her hauled her upright, holding her tight to his chest. Now he was fucking up into her, through the orgasm, the weight of her body forcing him further into her, an ache building into a delicious pain as could actually feel him growing, the gooseflesh covering his body as he came closer to his own peak.

He babbled in her ear, about how he would fuck her to death before he ever let her go, his voice poisonous and addicting. She came again, not even wondering at it.  It was too good.  As she convulsed around his cock he froze, clutching her, and she felt him jerk hard over and over as he came.

Loki fell gracefully to the side, bringing Nora with him, turning so she was nestled between his hard, long form and the soft sofa back.

They lay there, breath heaving, soaked in each other’s sweat and cum, in utter stillness.  Nora thought she would be fine living on that sofa for the rest of her life.

After he had gathered himself Loki leaned up on his elbow and rolled her onto her back. He just looked at her for a few moments, his sybarite’s face peaceful, and for just a second Nora thought he was going to kiss her. 

Instead, he gave her an aristocratic head tilt and a sardonic grin, “Quite an improvement on your bathroom lover, it seems. And no linger smell of urine and cheap beer in your hair after the fact.”

He untangled their legs and stood, stretching, his clothing immediately back in order, “I have some work to do. Don’t wait dinner for me, pet.”

Nora sat up, pulling her dress back into place, trying to find her panties, “I’m not your pet.”

“You are a lesser creature that I feed and water and that I keep for my entertainment. Whatever else could you be?” He said over his shoulder as he left the room.

 

Loki took two steps after closing the door to be certain Nora wasn’t following him, and then slumped to the floor, his hands and legs shaking. He ran his hands through his hair, trying to calm himself, his eyes rolling back as he smelled her on his fingers.

Not just there. She was all over him.

“You will get your wish, treasure,” he whispered to himself, “for you will surely be the death of me.”


	5. The Domestic Life of a Supervillain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not much more than smut. Sorry about that.

Loki watched Nora as she sorted through the various garments in the chest of clothing he had ordered for her, ignoring him and looking more and more dissatisfied as she went on.

Neither thing pleased him.

Finally, hands full of silks and velvets she turned and snapped at him, “What?”

He felt himself smile at her, as much as he tried not to. Another woman might fly at him in a fury for his cruelty, or blush at his use of her the night before in his library and her own response to it, or show the fear that he knew she felt towards him.  Instead, Nora was irritated that she could not find raiment that suited her modest tastes.

Tastes he had intentionally ignored when creating her wardrobe, choosing rather to indulge in his own desires for what she might wear.

“You did not come to bed last night, pet,” he said, drawling the words out and strolling across the dressing chamber to her, knowing it would annoy her further. “Did you not sleep?”  He stroked a finger down her cheek, then used it to lift her chin.  At the slightest upset of her equilibrium Nora ceased to sleep or eat with any regularity.

“I slept, sort of, where you left me. You’re exhausting.”  Nora turned away from him and back to the chests, still hoping against hope to find a pair of sweatpants and a cotton sweater no doubt, her normal at home costume.

“You are welcome,” he smirked at her.

She ignored that and kept looking. At one point she pulled out an intricately carved box of rare, scented woods, inside was a tiara made of emeralds and amber.  “Seriously?” 

“You are a princess now. Even if you cannot act as one, you will need to attire yourself as one.”

She stopped, dropping the coronet as if it was as distasteful to her as Cubs baseball hat and stood to look him in the eye. When he had been Eddie she had always had to look slightly down to meet his eye.  One of the things he had most respected about his Nora was that she had never stopped wearing heels or slumped when they were together.  She positively towered over him in their wedding pictures, when she had allowed Marissa to strap her into a pair of stilettoes. 

Now she had to look up to him. Which she did, with the same expression and crossed arms she used when Eddie was most rude to her, a curiosity tinged with hurt and self-protection.

Loki braced himself, waiting for her to blast him, to tell him that he was a monster and that she loathed him. That his touch turned her flesh. 

“Is it reincarnation?” Nora asked, calmly.

Loki cocked his head at her, like a confused hound. “What?”

“Did I do something to you in a past life? My past life, that is.  If you’re over a thousand years old it could still be your current life.  Did one of those fucking Vikings that worshipped you get killed by one of my lives in Ireland when they were coming to steal our shit?  Was I some maid in your lovely castle here and I put too much starch in your regal underpants and the chaffing was unbearable?  Why do you hate me so much?”

Because my father only assumes he knows how I feel about you, and his little spy of a maid is reporting how I treat you, he thought. Because I need to keep you as far from me and as close to me as I can at the same time to protect myself.  Because perhaps if I pretend long enough to scorn you it will someday be true and I can let you go.  Because I love you desperately, and it terrifies me.

He shrugged, “I do not wear undergarments,” taking one of her hands and pressing it to his now insistent erection. “I recommend that you do likewise, as it will save us a great deal of time over the next few days.  Our benevolent king has a task that will take me from you side soon, little pet, and I plan to spend the meantime sating myself as often as possible.  Three years of chastity is a great deal to make up for.”

Rather than pulling her hand back when he let it go, Nora traced the outline of his cock, “It wasn’t three years, it was…“ her voice was soft and slightly dazed, as she looked where she touched. It occurred that she had not actually seen his best feature yet.

“Three years without my true, chosen flesh,” he brushed her hand aside and with nimble fingers unlaced his braes, using his other hand to hold her face so she could not look away.

She did not try to.

Loosing himself, Loki guided Nora’s willing hand to his cock.

Her fingers now traced his skin, feathering along the ridge where his head met the shaft, stroking each vein with just a touch of pressure, circling where his foreskin had pushed back. Her other hand rested on his hipbone, and as her breathing grew more ragged simply from touching him, she squeezed there.

Loki let his head fall back, a sigh slipping unbidden from his lips. Nora’s touch was sweeter and far more wicked than a stolen pear drenched in honey. 

A finger swiped over his tip, and his head jerked up at the pleasure.

She was no longer looking down, but had clearly been studying his face. She lifted her hand away from him and licked a pearl of his precum from her thumb, her eyelids fluttering slightly, her bright brown eyes nearly black with wanting.

He moved to kiss her neck, but she slammed her hand against his breastbone. “No.”  Before he could respond she knelt, sneering at him, and swiped her tongue to gather liquid from his tip, all the while staring into his eye.

Loki’s heart started to slam against his ribs.

“This is what you like, right? Getting people to kneel to you?  This does it for you, doesn’t it?”  Her voice was husky.

“Yes…” he hissed.

Taking him in a firm hand, Nora pulled his cock down from where it pointed upwards, and began to lick just the head in long, curving strokes. Loki moaned.  Her every touch was ecstasy.  His fingers dug into her hair, but he made himself stay still otherwise, fearing that any interference on his part would stop her glorious ministrations. 

 But when she took part of him into her mouth to suck his fisted hands started to guide her anyway. 

One of her hands stayed firmly in place on his shaft while the other cupped his testicles, her finger tips stroking the place between them and his opening.

Normally one for prolonging pleasure to the point of agony, Loki this time gave himself over, feeling the rush of his orgasm coming he started to fuck into Nora’s hot, suckling mouth, his eyes closed, fantasizing about what was actually happening to him as he had so many other times.

The pleasure began to overwhelm, and his cock swelled further and then – and then-

“ACH!” He shoved Nora away from him.  “What –“ he gasped, examining himself.

She fell back, staring back at him, wiping a bit of drool from her insolently smiling mouth. “Haven’t you ever heard?  Mistreated pets bite.”  She stood up, “And if you even think about hitting me I swear, to the actual fucking god, I will kill you.”

Loki laughed. She was wonderful, and he was doomed.

 

“I have had bite marks there before. Pet,” Loki spat the last word.  “Deep ones.”  He moved forward, and Nora felt herself backing up.   Naked, holding his still angrily erect dick, smiling, there was an aura of endless menace and malice that seemed to cloud the air around Loki. 

She knew not to run, but she did keep stepping back until she hit the wall.

“But you did choose your moment. My guard was quite far down.  It will not be again,” he braced a forearm over her head on the wall, his fingertips toying with her hair,  “And I know all about how to tame a recalcitrant beast.  To gentle a wild thing to my hand.”

His other hand was smoothing up her throat, making her shiver, and he angled her head to his liking so he could bend to kiss her mouth for the first time, gracefully bowing like a willow over water.

Nora cursed her overactive imagination, his beauty, how aroused she was, and then stopped because his mouth was on hers, with a lover’s tenderness. She tried to make it more aggressive, to force her tongue into his mouth, not able to bear breaking the kiss, but also not able to bear the illusion of affection that came with it.

But Loki would have none of it. He clearly meant to kiss her the way he wanted to, for as long as he wanted.  Which was sweetly and forever, apparently.  His mouth softly took in her tongue, and then his lightly stroked along it, then his lips took hers into a lush, soft place, every nerve ending of her body both enervated and soothed. 

Groaning, Nora slid her arms around his neck, pressing herself up against his chest. One of his broad palms pushed firmly but with no aggression on her back, so she was off balance and he was the only thing that kept her from falling.

The last part of Nora’s brain that was interested in anything but kissing Loki calmly and rationally reminded her not to fall for this. To take what she was owed and give nothing back.  Three years of- no FIVE years of pleasure and orgasms.  Two years of her sex drive being low enough for an ant to vault over and three years being with a man who acted as if having sex with her was a chore to be put off forever if possible.

The same man who was now kissing her so sweetly it made her heart ache as badly as her cunt did.

Finally he stopped, but only after several smaller, even softer kisses that just barely brushed her lips, “I am going to take you to bed for the rest of the day. And tomorrow.  And the day after tomorrow.”  As lovely as the kiss was, his voice was cool, almost disinterested.

But she believed him.

“Um, I haven’t-“

“I will feed you.”

“What about-“

“We can bathe after. I want the smell of you embedded in my essence when I leave.  And I want mine to haunt your dreams.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because I know I can hurt you more this way. And I want to hurt you, pet.  I want to make you cry.”  His voice was dark with promise and threat. 

He picked her up and walked out of the room. Nora heard a little shriek as poor Yngvild caught sight of them.

“You can’t make me love you.” She whispered, kissing his ear.

“Yes, I can,” he looked at her, “I could cast a spell right now that would make you love me so much your heart would actually stop beating if I left you.”

Loki pushed the bedchamber door open with his shoulder, “I could make love to you now, rather than fuck you as I plan. I am skilled enough that I could overwhelm your senses so utterly that you would believe I had to love you to touch you so.  And I know you, Nora,” something about the way he drawled her name, rather than snipping ‘pet’ at her, made Nora gulp, “you have a warm heart, a sympathetic one.  You would find it impossible not to love one who loved you.”

He tossed her onto the huge bed, falling after her, to surround her with the cage of his body, “Or, knowing you, I could treat you like someone that I love. I could do those things that I know would mean the most to you.  I have studied you so carefully these last years.  When everything else grew stale I learned a new chapter in your story.  I know that if I were to do certain simple little things, make a few tiny gestures, say a few specific kind words, you would fall in love with me hard enough to break a bone.”

He licked a tear that had leaked out without her knowing it. “But not to worry, little princess, all I require is your body and your surrender.  You can keep your heart.  I have no use for it.”

Then he stood, looking down at her while stroking himself. “I don’t like that dress on you, either.”

With a small, arrogant nod, the black silk gown that had been the only thing she had found this morning that she didn’t hate, shredded around her body in long strips, which then wound themselves around her forearms and calves, the slither of the silk like tongues on her skin, making her writhe. The ends of each strip then shot out, gripping the head and footboards of the bed.

Before she could move, Nora found her body dragged to the center of the bed as she was bound with her legs open and her wrists bound together over her head. “I don’t-“

Loki sat next to her, “Yes, you do.” He circled a fingertip around her navel. 

Damnit. She kept forgetting that everything she had ever told Eddie she had told him too.

“You do so many things,” he smirked, “such versatile and varied interests. There is something we have in common,” he circled and then trailed his hand down, scratching lightly on the top of her mound.  His nails were perfectly manicured. “I am going to watch you come now, pet.  So many times.  And then I’ll consider letting you rest.”

Long fingers slid between her wet lips to gently pet her clit. Nora tried to remember the names of everyone in the classes she took for her Confirmation.  The address of her piano teacher in grade school.  The first thirteen lines of the Canterbury Tales.  Her aunt’s recipe for egg salad.  Any unpleasant thing she could think of to delay the inevitable.  To make the bastard work for what he wanted for her.

“I know everything you like. Everything you know you like.  Everything you don’t know you like.  Yet.  So don’t bother to resist.  Just come for me,” his sonorous voice crooned.  “Does it not feel good?  My long fingers just stroking you like this?  Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, right where you are so sensitive.  Maybe it’s too much.  Maybe just one finger right here,” now just one finger pressed into her, hooking, and Nora’s hips arched up, needing more of his touch, suddenly panting, “that’s good, isn’t it, my sweet, pretty pet?  That’s right where you need me, isn’t it?’

“Yes…” she said. She didn’t care anymore. 

“More?” He purred, he tapped light as a feather.

“More….please, more….” She undulated against his touch.

“Good girl. So polite,” his touch became more insistent, waking more and more need in her, more and more pressure.  So good, so unbearable.  “You want to come for your husband, don’t you?”

Nora could only moan in response, her mouth wouldn’t form anything as complicated at words.

He leaned over her, staring into her face, “Come for me now, Nora. Show me,” he murmured as he pressed hard, his other hand grabbing her hair so she couldn’t turn away from his gaze when she came with a gushing scream.

When she finished riding the pleasure out on his hand, he let her hair go, nuzzling her jaw and making noises of appreciation. “What a promising start,” he said with a light, chilly laugh that barely registered through the haze of Nora’s afterglow.  “I was going to do that a few more times, but first, I really must fuck you.”

With a wave of his hand the silk wrapping came loose from the bed, although her arms remained bound. When he knelt between her thighs and pulled her hips over his, Nora hung helplessly in his hands.  Slowly he glided his cock into her, an inch at a time, giving her time to get used to the position that meant it slid along her already over-stimulated g-spot, while his fingers fondled her neglected clit. 

This time he kept her on edge for what felt like hours. Nora hung between him and nothingness, every time she came close to coming again he would stop what he was doing and do something else, slower.  By the time he let her come again she was starting to forget where she was, who she was, and what exactly was going on.  Everything but Loki, who kept up a filthy running commentary to ensure he was at the forefront of her every scattered thought.

His own orgasm was a shuddering mess of alien profanity and shuddering gasps for air.

When he finally gathered himself, Nora could feel the silk come undone from her arms and legs. Loki took each into his graceful hands, examining her carefully, massaging a bit, but all in an impersonal, abstract way.   Nora was half asleep, but she felt like an expensive car that was being checked for paint scratches.

No, guys tended to very emotional about their cars. Maybe she was more like computer where someone was running a virus scan.

Maybe exhaustion was making her a little goofy.

“Sleep for a while, I’ll send the girl for food. What do you want?”

“Bacon and whiskey,” she muttered, and the last thing she heard before slipping off was a ratcheting laugh.

 

As promised Loki kept her in bed for three days. He did not bind her again.  Rather, he seemed determined to not repeat any act during that time.  Nora didn’t bother with token resistance after that point.  Why should she?  He was right.  The very sexual frankness that she had used, hoping in vain to find a way to interest Eddie left her unable to mount a defense.  

And so for three days Loki gave her a demonstration of sexual virtuosity and emotional detachment, and when she woke on the fourth day he was gone without a word or an idea of when he would be back.

 

 


	6. Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day. But set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.  (Sir Terry Prachett)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki does Odin's bidding, Nora does some redecorating.

There were a large number of guns and blades, being held by grim, battle-hardened warriors, pointed at Loki where he lounged, legs spread, chin propped in his palm, on the only passably comfortable chair in the underground bunker.

“Who are you? How did you-,”  The tiny woman, her aged, purple skin as crumpled as a good-bye note from a lover, was clearly the leader of this ragtag band of freedom fighters.

Loki sighed. He _hated_ ragtag bands of any kind.

Then he snapped his fingers.

The grey crystals wrapped in golden microfilaments he had placed around the room prior to the return of the soldiers all made a glassy ‘click,’ shooting out thin rays of power that turned into a quickly contracting net that captured the grim and battle-hardened types in a cramped ball of arms and legs and weapons.

Esselant was a pretty blue and green world, was rather like Midgard had been prior to the modern era in a number of ways. It had a wide variety of plant and animal life, massive, teaming oceans, and a courageous, adaptable, ignorant, violent, and utterly tiresome dominant sentient species.

But unlike Midgard, Esselant had been under the oppressive rule of an alien royal family for several centuries. The Otlek had once been an important clan amongst the Dark Elves when an ill-timed coup, several poorly executed political maneuvers, and a completely botched assassination attempt on Loki’s former mistress Queen Alfyse, had left them exiled. 

But, as Loki knew, in the darkest moments the truly evil flourish. All of the aggression and bruised egos of these powerful creatures had fallen on the poor Esselanti, who had just been minding their own business of endless internecine warfare between opposing political and religious theories, dying of the starvation and diseases wrought by said warfare, and being technologically and magically inferior to the Dark Elves who conquered their planet and enslaved them with very little effort.

For the following decades the Otlek had raped the planet (and many of its inhabitants), raised a mercenary army from the Esselanti that became one of the most dreaded and profitable in the Nine Realms, and generally had their way at all times. They had also, without meaning to, created a unity amongst the Esselanti.  Proving, as Loki had already known, that a shared hate is the greatest binding force in the universe.

Now a group of those newly unified Esselanti had turned into a plucky group of insurrectionists, determined to bring down their hateful oppressors.

And, to his disgust, Loki’s first assignment from his darling daddy was to offer aid to the rebels.

“Sadly, I am here to help,” he help up a finger, gulping a bit, “Apologies, I just retched a tad.” After composing himself, Loki smiled as pleasantly as he could manage, “Comfortable?  No?  Good.  Now, let me explain how one _actually_ overthrows a government.”

 

The pain where the skin on Nora’s skull split on the piece of rebar was so clean and sharp it kept her from passing out from the impact of her head on the ground.

Rolling over, she nearly fell into hole in the street that went all of the way down to the subway. Her hands pushed, barely catching, her hands red and sore and several of her fingernails broken as she pushed herself back from the brink.

Blood dripped from her hair, landing on the broken body of a commuter caught in the rubble far beneath her.

She made it to her knees, shaking. The white dust in the air and the muffled feeling in her own broken head gave her a little cave to hide in from the sounds of the battle in the sky, the battle on the ground.  For a few moments Nora just stayed there, trying not to vomit. 

Finally, she got one unsteady foot under her, then the other. Her hands trembled and she wrapped her arms around her body that stank of fear and smoke and blood.  Her head cleared enough to hear the screams from that hole she had nearly fallen into.  She turned away from it.

“Hello, pet,” a dark, affectionate voice said.

Loki smiled at her so gently. He wasn’t wearing his armor, but rather a beautifully cut suit with an expensive top coat and a raffish scarf.  In his hand he held the scepter that was almost as famously a part of his image as the great horned helm. 

He took a step towards her, raising it to the level of her heart.

“I promise, this won’t hurt. You’ll love it, actually.  It will make you so happy,” he hushed, moving slowly forward, his coldly beautiful face looking contorted by kindness and affection.

Nora felt herself sway, just a little, not because she was lightheaded and broken, but because she wanted to go to him. To fall against him, let him make her over, or whatever it was that that thing did to people.  It sounded so sweet, to be happy. 

He smiled at her again, offering his hand, “Come away with me, princess.”

He was the most splendid thing Nora could imagine.

She turned away and ran the two steps that took her into the gaping hole.

 

Nora woke, screaming in terror.

As ordered, Yngvild no longer called one of the guards every time it happened. The young maid would simply dither around outside of the door of the library where Nora had more or less moved in, even more terrified than her mistress that she would be blamed for the state of things when Prince Loki returned.

And the state of things was _dreadful_!

The morning that the prince had left, Mistress Nora had woken with her first nightmare.

She had risen, and throwing on a robe, gone to the main doors of the prince’s chamber, throwing them open. Yngvild had followed her, wringing her hands, trying to explain that the princess was not free to leave.  That the guards would be forced to stop her.

They had not needed to. When Princess Nora tried to step through the doorway she was repelled. 

She tried again.

And again.

Her voice shook, “Yngvild, would you do me a favor? Try to step out of door, ok?”

Yngvild could have told her that she knew she would be able to leave the rooms. That she had just entered them shortly before, but rather than speak she simply stepped out to stand between the two very confused einherjar, who were openly gawking at the mysterious new princess that had been the subject of so much speculation.

Princess Nora had nodded, her head bobbing as if it could not stop, “Ok, ok,” she muttered over and over, retreating with Yngvild at her heels.

She had then gone to Prince Loki’s main receiving room, the one with the great balcony that overlooked the city and the great river. As with the main doors to the Prince’s chambers, while the Princess could open them, she could not step through.  And so it was with every window in every room, Princess Nora growing more distressed and still chanting “Ok ok ok…” to herself as she clearly felt increasingly trapped.

Eventually she had made her way through every room, save His Highness’s workroom, which only he could enter.

After she had composed herself Nora had insisted that Yngvild send word that she needed to see the All-Father, and then had refused to eat. Instead she went to the dressing chamber, going through the Prince’s belongings, throwing them around, then using some of them to fashion herself a peculiar outfit of leggings, several pairs of heavy stockings, and a few layers of tunics.

Yngvild tried to place the prince’s clothing back EXACTLY as he had left it, but over the next days it became impossible as the princess wore the clothing, hiding herself away in the library, eating virtually nothing, would wake in a cold sweat of screams and fear, and then, when the clothing became too foul grabbing another pile clean garments, washing herself hastily, and beginning the cycle again.

All of the while, sending more and more messages asking to see the king, who never responded.

The maid even added her own importuning to the princess’s in the reports she sent to Lady Sif, who then reported on them to His Majesty. She worried that her mistress would do herself some permanent harm.  She worried even more what the prince would do to her if that happened.

 

Nora gave herself a few days to lose her shit.

She thought she deserved it.

And, really, there wasn’t anything she could do about it, even if she tried. She had fallen right back to where she had been five years ago, after the Battle of New York – nausea, nightmares, and survivor’s guilt.  Now with a lovely, glossy overlay of sexual shame, self-loathing, and deep, specific knowledge about the main subject of all of her dread. 

Curled up on the floor near the fireplace, covered in the various fur throws from the couches, alternately shivering and then dripping with cold sweat, Nora wondered how many days she had been here. Had it even been two weeks?  Did they even have weeks on Asgard?  Or months?  Years, even?  If they lived so long would they even bother to account for such small periods of time?

How long had _he_ been gone, for that matter?

She shoved that thought away, sitting up and forcing herself to drink some of the now warm water that little (yet gigantic) Ynigvild had weakly insisted she had to take into the cave she had made of the little library.

But he would not stay shoved away. Loki had just as much primacy in her waking thoughts as in her sleeping ones.  Nora would close her eyes and see his smirk, would feel his teeth nipping at her palm, and then his leering comment at the lavish shudder that had gone through her, “So responsive to me, my pet.  I could probably make you come just you by _biting_ the right way.  Would you like that?”

It had been the morning he had left, and he had rolled her onto her side, pulling her thigh back over his hip so he could lazily fuck her one last time before leaving to go where he wouldn’t say for how long he didn’t seem to care.

“Why do you hate me?” She asked, helplessly trying to find somewhere to grab, to anchor herself against the pleasure. “I don’t know wh-“

He had given an ugly laugh, pressing his fingers over her mouth, “Shhhhh...here, keep yourself busy,” and with his free hand had guided her fingers between her legs, forcing her to stroke herself to two orgasms before finishing himself.

He was right about how responsive she was to him. Even the memory of what had been between the two of them (or, more realistically, what Loki had done for himself involving her body) over those three days was enough to make her come just from the memory.

Or to cry.

For a few minutes Nora thought she was going to do both at once. But she didn’t.

She refused. Instead she stood up and called for Yngvild, who scurried into the room as if she had been just outside the whole time, “I don’t know who you have to talk to get them, but I want a pair of pants and a sweater and a pair of proper shoes.  Ask that big gold fucker what I mean if you have to.  If you people are gods I expect you can find something. 

“And I want beer. And cookies.  I’m taking a bath.  You should have some cookies, too.”

After the girl had gone Nora just stood there for a moment, feeling a bit lightheaded. Then she looked at the fireplace and then at the door.  “I want hard liquor too,” she called after the girl.  “Do you people have Everclear?”

 

A planet-wide celebration had taken over Esselant, with dancing in the streets, drinking, music, and wild, abandoned sexual excess being the rule of the day even amongst the most reserved of its inhabitants.

The wildest celebration was at the no longer secret bunker of the rebels.

Loki was terribly bored by it all.

It had been almost too easy.

A violently successful attack by the Esselant rebels, taking out the Otlek’s administrative center in the capitol city had led to similar uprisings across the world. Indeed, the information blackout that the rulers had tried to impose after the fact, had failed and word had spread across the planet as if by magic.

There had been a few skirmishes of minor interest, and Loki had a brief encounter with one of the daughters of the Otlek, a magic user of no little talent, but very little training, as the clan of Dark Elves had become magically lazy since arriving on Esselant. She had kept him entertained for a few minutes until he realized that toying with her held no savor.

Had this not been what Loki had been longing for during his exile on Midgard? Warfare, magic, and scheming?  Why was he not more entertained?

Because the warfare was pedestrian, the magic feeble, and the scheming unworthy of his gifts?

He certainly hoped that was why. Any other answer was unthinkable.

“No,” he said, pushing yet another willing and nubile body from his lap, a girl this time he thought, though he was not certain, so quickly had he shoved it away. He was terribly popular with the rebels, to his disgust.  They all wanted to drink with him, tell stories of his bold deeds, even embrace him, seemingly unaware of how revolting he found being in unnecessary physical contact with lesser beings.

“Prince Loki! Celebrate with us!” one of the soldiers he had recently led to victory, a burly creature with aubergine skin and golden eyes, called to him.

Loki gave a half-hearted smile, lifting the bottle he had been sipping from, unsure what it was. Just one or two more days to finish the plans to destroy the last of the Otlek ships that were just outside of the atmosphere, waiting for the right moment to strike, and then he could return home.

“I will find my bed, Hilson,” he said, slapping the soldier’s back in an act of false comradery.

“You may find your bed, but you won’t find what you want there,” Hilson answered, “You miss that wife of yours. That Nora.”

Loki stopped, “What do you mean?” he said, coldly. Literally so.  The temperature around him began to drop.

“You only mentioned her a thousand times this week,” Hilson laughed.

“That can’t be true.” Nora had no bearing on his purpose here, there was simply no reason her name should have crossed his lips.

“You speak about her all of the time.”

“I might have mentioned her in pass-“

Hilson shook his head and jumped up on a table, “Everyone! Everyone!  Shhhh!”  He made a wide gesture with his arms to silence the other rebels, “I want to propose a toast to our newest, our best, friend.  To Loki!”

Hundreds of hands, some holding drinks, some holding weapons, some clenched in fists, rose into the air, “TO LOKI!”

Loki felt unfamiliar warmth flush over his face.

“And, and, and,” Hilson shushed the crowd, “To his wife!”

Again, hundreds of hands rose, and all as one, shouted, “TO NORA!”

Damn.

 

Loki ignored Heimdall and the “honor” guard of Einherjar waiting for him when stepped from the Bifrost, he would like to have ignored Sif as well, but she would make that impossible, he thought.

“Does father think I have forgotten my way to the throne room? It has not been THAT long, Sif.”

She looked…nervous.

“The All-Father requires you to attend to your wife before reporting to –“

Loki felt his heart race, and then his legs. If Odin was sending him to Nora rather than hearing the outcome of his first mission something must be terribly amiss with her.  The einherjar and Sif scrambled to keep up with him as his long legs took him to his waiting steed.

He left the poor beast, lathered and panting, in the hands of a surprised and frightened looking servant (clearly word had not finished passing that he had returned) and charged up the stairs.

As he approached his wing, Loki smelled burning, and heard several voices.

Shockingly, one of them was Hogun the Silent.

“Princess, please be reasonable.”

“I don’t remember how,” Nora answered.

Loki turned the corner, slowing his run, his boots nearly going out from under him but just catching himself in time to straighten his tunic, and slick back his hair, arriving onto a scene of chaos.

The doors to his rooms were open wide, and before them were any number of servants and guards, as well as Hogun and the other two members of the Hangers On Three. Most of them were standing to either side of the hallway because the center of it was filled with a great deal of smoldering and burning rubbish. _His_ burning rubbish.  Clothing, mostly, as well as various pieces of art, bedding, even some small furnishings.

Only Hogun and that little maid, Yngvild, stood in directly in the center of the open doors, facing inward.

“Watch out,” he heard Nora call out.

Hogun and Yngvild both scrambled away.

A pair of leather slippers that Loki was especially fond of and that were now merrily burning, were flung towards the growing pile of his belongings.

Nora had somehow dragged his throne to just inside of the doors to their rooms, as well as a table, a stack of his things, a burning candle, and some snacks. She was laying sideways across the seat, her legs dangling over the arm, eating cookies and drinking beer.  Someone, the maid no doubt, had obtained for her some heavy workman’s trousers, a knit tunic of the kind worn by fishermen, and a pair of the low, laced boots favored by goat herders in the mountains.  She looked very comfortable.

Loki caught a whiff of the grain alcohol she had poured all over his belongings.

No doubt she had first tried simply setting fire to his things in his chambers and discovered that, having had a bad experience with an angry former lover, Loki had the very walls within his room ensorcelled against unusual fires started by anyone other than himself. Anything she lit would have gone out in a few seconds or less.

She had also probably spent some time testing how close she had to get to the door to keep the fire lit long enough for his things to still be burning when they were outside the radius of his magic. Nora was very good at doing her due diligence.  It had made her an excellent customer service professional. 

Clearly she had been playing this game for some time. He knew she would react badly to being denied her freedom, but this bad behavior was unprecedented for his thoughtful wife. 

He quickly scanned the pile. No books.  That was good.  And not surprising. Although there were a few mementoes that he could not replace.  One of them the priceless coronet he had given Nora, which of course had not caught fire, but was little more than a jumble of twisted metal and fallen stones.

Fury and hilarity warred within him.

Loki stalked slowly forward, spreading his arms, “Sweet wife! I am sorry you were sooooo bored without me that you had to find your own entertainment.” 

Nora turned on her ass on his throne so her feet were on the ground and she was leaning forward, “Hello, you-“

Before she could finish what would doubtless be a stirring declaration of love that would be the gossip of the court for decades to come Loki raised a hand, pushing the throne back, pulling himself through the doors, and slamming them behind him in one massive gust of wind.

The huge chair tipped backwards, Nora still in it, and Loki stopped, putting one foot on the edge of the seat between her legs, propping an elbow on his knee so he could look down at her in fury.

“You are in rather a lot of trouble, princess.”


	7. There Is Only So Much I Can Give, But There is No End to What I Can Take

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki has some thoughts, Nora jumps to conclusions, and the author tries to have it both ways.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Hurricanerin. Hope you like it.

Loki looked down at Nora.

Her hair was a wild penumbra around her pale, shocked face, her mouth was open as she huffed to take back the breath that had been knocked from her by the impact of the chair hitting the floor. Her long neck was slightly arched, as if in an offering to him. 

She, again, needed to eat, bathe, and sleep, a weariness clear in her slack muscles and the tremble in her jaw and the soot dark circles marring the thin skin beneath her eyes.

His princess was breathtaking. More so than he could account for.  Loki’s entire body was heavy with desire and on fire with rage, and it occurred to him that these days apart were the longest he had been separated from Nora since not simply their marriage, but since they had first met at CDV. 

Her expression dared him to do something.

He knew how he could preserve forever that beautiful, glittering hate he saw in her gaze.

In his mind he reached down, fisting the front of her heavy shirt, pulling her up so they were eye to eye, her leather-covered toes trying to find purchase and lightly scraping upon the carved wood of his throne. Her wide eyes were startled, the black of her irises crowding out the bright, pale brown.  Her gasping breaths were no longer merely startled.

“You’ve been a bad girl, have you not?” He said crisply, keeping his voice calm, even while shaking her a bit in his fury.

“I’m not –“

He dropped her, and she stumbled backwards a few steps, trying to keep her feet. By the time she caught herself, Loki had righted the throne.  He seated himself with a quick flip of his leather coat, his legs spread wide, and his erection obvious.

“Very bad,” he shook his head, furious and smiling, “destroying my things. My clothing.  My gifts to you even, ungrateful child that you are.  But not to worry.  I have a way to restore matters between us,” he lightly tapped his thigh with an open palm. 

Nora reared back, looking deliciously horrified, “You better not mean what I think you mean.”

“Of course I do. Pet.”  He practically spat the last word, and then grinned again, making a come here gesture with one finger.

Not that he gave her the option of coming to him, but rather than simply pulling her to him, he forced her step by unwilling, dragging step towards him, until she was standing between his knees, breathing heavily from trying to resist him, her heart beat wild from failing. “Lay down, princess.  Soonest started and all of that...”

Now, rather than using his powers, Loki grabbed her arms as they tried to push away from him and jerked her down, sweeping her legs with his other hand, her delicate frame even with her new strength no match for his, so she was draped face down across his lap.  

Nora writhed and pushed and bit, angry beyond words. Loki lifted a leg to shift her off-kilter while trapping one of her hands under his thigh.  She was forced to wrap her free arm around his calf to keep any illusion of control.

An illusion he looked forward to shattering.

“Shhhh, little princess, shhhh,” Loki hushed, holding her shoulders down with one hand while his other smoothed down her back, using a little magic, just a touch, to calm her enough that she stopped fighting, while keeping her anxious and alert. The smoothing hand caught the loose waist of the terrible workpants she was wearing, pulling them down, and trailing his fingers between her legs.

Naturally, she was soaked, and Loki used all of his strength to keep from stroking her to completion. His desire for her pleasure was always nearly overwhelming for him.  Unconsciously, she pushed at his touch.  “Later, little princess.  If you take your punishment nicely.”

With no more preparation Loki lifted his wet hand and smacked her hard and fast, her left buttock completely covered by his large hand and long fingers, the sound of it deafening as it echoed on the marble walls of his hall, her cry of angry outrage no doubt audible to the audience still gathered outside of the doors. Which she surely knew, adding to her shame.

Loki clawed the fingers of his free hand through Nora’s thick, dirty hair, alternating pulls with gentle soothing scratches on her scalp.

Each strike trembled through her body, then trembling through his. The sting of his palm on her scrawny buttocks making him note that he needed to feed her.  Although she was turning gorgeously red, there was not enough of her for Loki to thoroughly enjoy the transformation.

Still, he loved the way his hand fit perfectly around her, the contrast of his pale skin to the pink and then rose and then crimson skin. As more of his marks appeared on her skin, his marks of possession, Loki became greedy for more.  He moved swiftly from one side to the other in an uneven rhythm to keep his treasure uncertain, unable to guard herself against the growing pain and desire.

Nora fought. She fought him through every blow, even as the jerks rubbed her clit harder and harder on the tooled leather of his armored thigh, as the wet from her rolled down till it pooled on the hard seat beneath him, hypnotizing him with her smell until he, unconscionably, lost count.

It was only when he heard her anger turn to moans and gasps, and he could feel her intentionally trying to ease herself on his leg that he stopped, knowing that she was at the point of pleasure. Jerking her upright so she stood before him, trying to cover herself, glaring at him in pain and confusion.

“Off you go, pet.” He motioned for her to scurry along, ignoring the deep pain in his chest as the look in her bright eyes hardened to an unbreakable wall of hate.

Nora’s tart voice snapped at him from where she was still laying on the floor, ousting him from his fantasy, “Ummm… are you just going to stand there glaring me into submission, or can I get up now?”

 

Nora felt the blood rushing to her head, as she looked up at where Loki had been perching over her like a bird of prey for the last minute or two, the anger on his face easing as he seemed to drift off for a moment, still all of the while pinning her in place with his stare. As he seemed to gather himself, he smiled at her, a slow, snakelike smile, “You are a lucky girl, Nora.  Apparently I am not as ready for that expression on your face as I had thought I was.”

“What are you talking about?” She asked.

He stepped back, offering her his hand.

Ignoring it, Nora pushed herself backwards and got unsteadily to her feet. They stood facing each other, once again for a long time. “Well, get on with it,” she said, her nerve breaking.

He did that thing where he cocked his head like a predator catching the sound of a prey animal hiding nearby, “Get on with what?” He took two steps and was now close enough that she could feel his breath on her face.

“Whatever you’re going to do to me.” God, she hoped he couldn’t tell how freaked out she was by that intense stare.

The smile broadened, his mouth open in a ratcheting laugh, “Oh, no, pet. No.  I think it would be more fun to give you time to stew on your potential punishment.”

“Punishment? Fuck you, punishment!  Revenge, fine, but you have no fucking business punishing me!  I’m not your pet, and you kidnap me, and LOCK ME UP and then you have the gall to think you have any RIGHT to punish me?  You stole my fucking life!”  Nora wished she could back him up, make him change his expression, give any sense that she was anything other than a yapping, irritating little dog to him.

“Stole your life?” His voice was a soft hiss, growing incrementally louder with each syllable. “I,” he gestured to himself, brushing long fingers along his breastbone in an unconsciously erotic motion, “stole _your_ life?  You ungrateful child, I SAVED your life at no little cost to myself!” 

“You saved my existence! My life is… is… so far from here I don’t even know far it is! And it’s gone now, isn’t it?  I can never go back home!  I can never go back home...”

It hit her, then, really. She could never go home.  At home she was dead.  At home she was probably guilty of treason against the whole planet, even if she had married Loki unwittingly.  At home she would be a freak, watching years go by, killing everyone and everything she loved.

Pain washed all of the anger out of her body, “Just tell me why?” She begged.  She was willing to beg, if it got her any kind of answers.

Loki turned away from her, effortlessly lifting the chair she had dragged from his receiving room, seating himself in a graceful sprawl. “I have more enemies on Asgard than on Midgard, so I thought to spare you from their depredations by keeping you safely in my rather lavish chambers.  So sorry for that.”

“Chambers where there is nothing for me to do but brood and have nightmares, you limp fuck.”

Loki snorted musically at that. Eddie had always enjoyed it when she was vulgar, too.

Jesus, was Eddie even-

No, one damned thing at a time.

“You know that isn’t what I meant, anyway. Why did you marry me?  Why do you hate me?  What did I do to deserve you?  And don’t give me that being cursed business.  I don’t believe in that stuff.”

Now he frowned at her, “You are here, in the realm of the gods, in the thrall of a magician of no little power, but you ‘don’t believe in that stuff’?” he mocked her flat South Side accent. “You are ridiculous.”

Nora stalked to him, slamming her hands on the arms of his throne, “Tell me!”

Loki rolled his eyes, “Adorable as you are in a snit, I have to go see Odin. He is somewhat less adorable, snit-wise, and he is probably in a mighty one that I am taking so long to report.  Be prepared to eat and sleep with me tonight when I return.  Since you had no nightmares and were able to keep down a meal while I was here it is apparent you are too fragile to do without me.”

 

Loki’s meeting with Odin went roughly as he would suppose it would. Badly, and loudly. 

The king was as distressed by the astonishingly long time it had taken Loki to complete his mission (an entire ten days to overthrow a deeply entrenched oligarchy, absurd!) as he was by Nora’s noisy temper tantrum.

“The entire palace can speak of nothing but your bride’s insane behavior! The only reason the gossip is not worse is that all had make the assumption that she would have to be raving mad to marry you at all.”

It was a fair assumption, Loki conceded to himself.

“My fault entirely, majesty,” Loki said, giving the most insultingly deep and sweeping bow he could manage, “I remembered to leave enough water and kibble for her, but I forgot that she would probably need some toys as well. You know how some pets get _so_ bored and destructive when their owners leave them alone for too long.”

Now Odin rolled his eyes. Well, his eye, at any rate. “You may stop pretending this contempt for the girl, my son.  It convinces no one, save her.”

“Ah, so the maid _is_ a spy. Since I know even your power and Heimdall’s gaze cannot pierce the enchantments Frigga taught me to guard my privacy, I knew you would find a way to keep informed of my domestic arrangements.  I can assure you, _papa_ , that my contempt for everyone on Asgard is quite real, my princess included.  Though I will confess to holding her in less contempt than I do the rest of you.

“Just because I do not want to be responsible for her death does not mean that her life means very much to me. Outside of my bed, that is.” Loki leered at the older god, who gave him a look of distaste.

“Play your games as you will, Loki, but now that she has revealed herself so obviously I see no reason for the two of you to skulk in your rooms. You will attend the feasting tomorrow night, with your princess at your side.”

“No.”

 

It was quite late by the time the fight was over and Loki made his way back to his rooms. The smoldering pile of his belongings and the scorch mark beneath them was gone, and new, less shaken guards stood at either side of his door.

He was surprised to see Hogan waiting with them, a smallish wooden box in his hands. The least of objectionable of Thor’s companions quietly handed Loki the box with a slight bow.

“I thought you would want this,” he said in his soft, resonant voice.

He knew what was in it, and in spite of every instinct, thanked Hogun before turning away. He put the box in his workroom before seeking out his wife.  When he passed her maid in the hallway he bared his teeth at her in greeting, and she shied away so hard she struck the wall with a satisfying clatter.

Nora was sitting in his bed chamber on one of the chairs near the fire, she did not look up as he entered. She had bathed, but was dressed again in horrible workingman’s clothing.

“You know, I think I’m starting to understand the appeal of brooding. It makes you look all tormented and deep without having to actually extend any energy.”

He snorted, but when she looked up at him he realized something really was tormenting Nora. Something other than him, “What are you brooding over, princess?” he asked, sinking into the other chair, his body feeling tender after the stresses of the day.

“He forced you to marry me. That’s it, right?  Your father forced you to marry me as part of his whole punishing you, making you understanding the humans thing.”

Clever creatures, Loki knew, needed things to occupy them. Leaving them alone too long with their thoughts will cause them to suffer and imagine things.  A bright mind’s imagination will fill in the gaps in its own understanding.  He had done it any number of times himself.

Right now he could lean over, he could take her hand, and he could tell Nora that he married her because he loved her. That some of his cruelty was his pretending to protect her, while truly protecting himself.  That some of his cruelty was just that, being cruel because he was so angry all of the time, so hurt, because he had been so trapped, over and over, by his father’s lies, by Eddie’s body, by his own fury, by than-

No.

She had unwittingly given him a wonderful gift in making up a lie that they both could live with.

“Do not fret over it, Nora. We are married, and that is all.  Now, I am hungry, and weary, as are you.  And tomorrow I have a fresh, exciting ordeal for you.  My father,” and here, oh so insidiously, he hitched word just a tad, just enough to convince her that she was on to something about Odin, “is having a feast in our honor.  We will be for once united, if only in our loathing of the entire experience.”

This time when he stood and offered her his hand, Nora slid her’s into it.

That warm touch and the sad look in her eyes sealed her fate for the rest of that night. Dinner would be required, of course, but sleep would wait.

After watching her eat, and waiting a short time to make sure that she was going to keep it down, Loki took Nora to bed and did the most… unsettling thing she could imagine.

He made love to her.

At least, that was what it felt like.

Instead of magically disposing of her clothing, Loki had crossed to her end of the small dinner table and knelt down, untying her shoes and tossing them aside, then sliding his hands up her legs, and pulling her up. Still kneeling, he lifted her sweater and kissed and nuzzled against her stomach and hips, while his long, elegant fingers made swift work of the laces on her pants.  They slid to the ground, and she felt his smile on her skin that then turned into a nip as he grabbed her ass with both hands, kneading and fondling. 

The strange show of affection made the poisonous hollow that had been burning Nora’s throat since she had first woken with Loki in her, ease just a little. Her mind knew that this was just some new, taunting game he was playing with her, one of the ones he had even warned her about, but her body didn’t care, never cared when he was touching her.  She bent over his head, burying her face in the endless black of his hair to hide a sob.

“Take off that hideous garment, princess,” he whispered to her skin, and Nora pulled the sweater off, glad to be distracted for a moment.

Loki’s arms slid around her, and he stood, lifting her off the ground, his face now between her breasts. He moaned a touch, licking her and biting her breastbone as he carried her to the bed and laying her out.  He spread her hair out around her head, and then lay next to her propped up on his elbow. 

“Kiss me,” Nora said, not meaning to.

“Oh, yes,” he purred. His lips were soft, and his tongue nudged its way into her mouth slowly, as if he were drunk or drugged.  He rolled over, pulling her onto him, “Are you wet, Nora?”

“Yes,” she was almost always wet around him, almost always ready.

“Take me in you then.” That same soft, hushed voice, that same near affection in his tone, that same brush of amusement in his expression that she always wanted to wipe off of his face.

Instead, Nora straddled his stomach, gripping the firm muscles with her thighs, rubbing herself on him a bit, having seen how any signs of her arousal drove him wild even when he tried his best to hide it. “How do I feel on you, prince?  Do you like how wet I am as much as I do?”

Loki gave a snarling laugh, “You are a wicked thing, pet. I always knew it.  Now fuck me, little wife,” and, not giving her a chance to tease him further, lifted her by her hips and rubbed her on his cock until her head rolled back and her hands fumbled between her legs to put him where she needed him.

It was the kind of slow and endless fucking that was rare and always ended with mindless slamming and humping, but not for a long, long time. Not until every muscle in Nora’s legs and torso were screaming in effort, not until Loki had bruised her ass and hips where he grabbed her and dug in so he could force her down and down and down on him in long, scooping thrusts, not until she came once, her boneless body falling onto his, finishing against his fingers, and not until he flipped her over, leaving her whiningly hollow for a few moments until he covered her with his heavy, cool body, hands holding her hands down next her head, his legs pushing hers apart and he fucked her to pieces, her next orgasm wiping her mind clear of everything but how he felt, and smelled, and sounded in his release.

 

When he knew Nora was truly, deeply asleep, Loki disentangled his body from hers. He had to grab the wall, his own legs still shaking.

Nora had curled up automatically as he left her, protecting herself in her sleep. But her face was blissfully soft for the first time in as long as he could remember.  He had been self-indulgent and weak tonight, knowing that Nora would be feeling sympathetic towards him because of her belief that he had been forced to marry her against his will.  The way she had looked at him, at Loki’s own self, with an openness and if not any affection then at least a desire to understand, had undone him.

Well, it just meant that she would be driven even farther away when he returned to his normal campaign of indifference and self-protection, he thought with some satisfaction. He would do whatever it took to return the scorn to her eyes.

It surely would not take much.

His workroom had always been his favorite place other than his bed, and since it did not contain Nora and her wonderful smell of apples and warmth, he preferred it now. Loki’s presence caused candles to light and a fire to kindle in the forge.

For a while he tinkered with a potion he had been trying to perfect for the last few decades, but found it could not hold his attention. Nor could the sword that he had been layering with enchantments in an attempt to make it transform automatically into the most effective weapon against any given foe.

With a sigh, he pushed a hand through his hair, while flipping open the box Hogun had given him.

What was inside gave off a whiff of smoke from where it lay within the burning pile of his belongings. Loki, using just his fingertips, lifted it out to give it a careful examination.  In the bottom of the box the emeralds that had fallen out gleamed and winked at him. 

Nodding to himself, he reached for a set of small tools in a velvet pouch and set to restoring the twisted wreckage of the coronet his mother had worn during the brief days between her marriage to Odin and her being crowned queen of Asgard.


	8. First We Feast, Then We Do Everything Else

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki Meets Some Old Friends, Nora Makes A New One

“Stop tugging at it,” Loki hissed at Nora, “you may cause it harm.”

“Well, it’s driving me crazy.”

Loki gave her a look that implied for him that was part of the charm. 

“If it is any consolation, you look...marginally sufficient in it.”

“Why you charming motherfucker...” Nora muttered, turning again, trying to see if there was any way she could walk in the gown Loki had more or less ordered her to wear to the feast that night. While her immediate desire was to toss the damn thing off of the balcony (another trick she could do, as she had discovered recently), she was going to have to wear something and if she was going to petition the King of Space for a favor soon she would need to be presentable.

Presentable on Asgard meant a big dress, with a train, and what seemed to be some kind of silver breastplate that only protected one of her breasts. If someone started shooting crossbow bolts and tossing daggers at her, Nora was just going to have to turn hard left and hope for the best.

The fact that the dress looked flowing and comfortable hid some very…dominating undergarments that were needed to hold all of the bits in place. 

Loki was wrong, she didn’t look sufficient in any way. She looked like an idiot. Nothing about the Opening NIght at Bayreuth style of the thing suited her. Not the train, not the high-neckline, and not the tiara that she refused to wear but that her husband kept magic-ing onto her head anyway. This time he had managed to coil her hair around the back of it, so could she not take it off easily. She was actually pulling her own roots trying to.  
Looking at herself in the long mirror, the tiara bothered her much more than the horrors of the gown. The dress Loki had insisted on just made her look silly, but the tiara made her look like-

It made her look like she mattered. 

Which was an unbearably painful lie.

“Just take it off, ok? Please?” 

He took a few steps so he stood behind her, his long, leather-clad legs wide and his armoured chest just barely kissing the silky sack-back of her gown. Long, pale fingers lightly rested on her shoulders and his hands glided up her sleeves, and then wrapped firmly around where her own hands were fussing with her hair. Careful of the tiara but not her, he pulled them away with a sharp squeeze, lifting them over her head so Nora had to stand on her toes. The stretch made the vindictive underpinnings of the gown snap against her hips.

“No,” Loki’s breath was always slightly cooler than it seemed it should be, and now it licked up her neck, where his lips did not quite make contact with her skin. “You will wear this lavish gift from your devoted husband for all of the court to see,” then he nipped her hard just where her throat met her jaw and then sucked. 

Nora couldn’t help herself, her head fell back and she let out a small gasp. His mouth was the most dangerous thing about Loki in many ways. Suddenly she was very happy to have layers and layers of silk skirts between them.  
He laughed at her.

“You will also wear the coronet.”

“Oh, I hate you…” Nora hushed.

Releasing her hands, Loki cupped her breasts, idly tweaking her nipples with a laugh, “I would not have it otherwise, pet,” he purred, nuzzling the mark he had just made. “I want you to be certain to eat properly at the feast, you are still too thin. And I plan to fuck you to weeping tonight, so you will need your strength.”

Nora had become good at compartmentalizing her thoughts when at work, and she had been with Loki just long enough now that if she tried very, very hard she could keep some things straight when he was toying with her. Being with him was certainly the hardest work she had ever done. At the moment, that one part of her mind that she was holding on to her by her fingertips was making a check mark next to a mental list she had of his behaviors.

There was a rhythm to his cruelty. It went (more or less) Be a Dick, Say Something Mean, Say or Maybe Do Something Else Mean, Be Sexually Aggressive, Sneak in Some Thoughtfulness, Then Be an Ass About It. She wasn’t sure what it meant, but it was such a studied, such an affected response that Nora felt it had to mean something.

“But the food here is so boring,” she moaned a little as he continued to play with her. ‘Strapped into an armoured tent and a funny hat, eating bland food with too sweet wine, with everyone staring at me, while I sit in a puddle. This is going to be the best night ever,’ Nora thought.

 

Loki had worried that Nora would be gawping and trying to see over their ‘honor’ guard as they processed to the feast hall. To prevent such undignified actions he had specifically chosen a very formal style of gown for her, to add both gravitas and actual weight to her so when she walked she had to concentrate on not tripping. That, and the constricting undergown that made her walk unnaturally upright which, with the aid of a bit of an illusion, made her look to be regally gliding at his side.

He also squeezed her fingertips rather harder than was needful from time to time to stop her from freeing her hand from where it rested in an elegant, formal curve over his own.

While Nora was unable to make an undignified mess of herself, Loki could not say the same of the servants, lackeys, soldiers, hangers-on, courtiers, and all of the other creatures of the palace they passed. Everyone was curious to see the Return of the Reprobate.

But they were desperate to see to his Deranged Princess. 

The whole evening, from their leaving of his chambers to their return, would be a series of tricky plays Loki was looking forward to. He had to project to all and sundry that while Nora meant nothing to him personally, she was his property and everyone knew what happened to those who dared to touch his things without his granting permission.

Loki never granted permission.

Then, at the same time, he had to not only give his…give Odin the same impression, but also add to it the brush of insult to the royal family. The coronet was a good start. It would horrify the proud AllFather to see his princess’s diadem on the head of the inferior creature wedded to his unworthy plunder-cum-second son. Loki had a pleasant little fantasy of all of the disgust and unhappiness that would just roll off of the king.

He also wanted to sustain the idea that Nora was quite mad as he was known to be. The last thing he needed was his kind and lovable treasure to win the hearts and minds of any of the sycophants that crowded the halls of the palace. It was safer that way. For Nora, of course. All of those brutes and fools were unworthy of her time.

The grand feasting hall was filled to bursting when they finally arrived, the masses parting before their procession in. Everyone who was anyone, or who could call on such an anyone’s friendship or a debt, had found a way to maneuver themselves into an invitation. It would be not only be the first chance to see Nora, but it would be the official public and official acknowledgement of Loki’s return to the fold. No one wanted to miss the show.

The einherjar took their places with the other guards along the perimeter of the hall. It was quietly amusing to Loki that the stern soldiers were flummoxed by the unmoving crowds who refused to make way for them, so eager were they to see the newest royal. 

That same crowd quickly dispersed before them, each member of the court making their reverence in a delightfully obsequious manner. Loki was pleased to see that all were if anything even more trepidatious of gaining his disfavor than they had been prior to his latest resurrection. 

Loki allowed himself a quick look at Nora as he he coldly gave that slight, meaningless tilt of the head that his mother had taught him as a child.

She looked quite pale and thin, as usual, and he had to admit a touch silly in the Asgardian fashion he had given her no choice about wearing. The erythema he had left on her graceful throat was just half visible above the high neckline that hid that lovely feature. It was so darkly red against the light yellow fabric it would look from a distance as if she wore a collar with one off-center ruby. Loki could see people unsubtly gesturing towards it and tutting and fretting with pleasure over the vulgarity of it. 

Nora did not so much ignore the mutters as Loki could tell she simply did not care. Nor did she care about the grandeur of the hall, the glorious array of the elegantly attired nobles, the over-abundance from the Realm Eternal that covered the feast-tables. All she cared about was getting through the night, getting out of the uncomfortable clothing she was wearing, and maybe the intercourse they would have later.

He allowed himself a thin smile down at her. She looked back up, her eyebrows pulled together as she gave him an adorably confused frown. None of this meant anything to her, and something about that made his heart ache.  
As did the realization that she must look rather in that get up foolish to the inferiors surrounding her. The color alone was a mistake. 

There was a collective gasp as Nora was briefly surrounded by a golden glow that obscured her and then dissipated, leaving her now wearing a simple black satin ballgown that he vaguely remembered her admiring in a magazine. She also let out a gasp, too, and mouthed a thank you to him, which he suspected had much to do with the relief of no longer wearing the mean-tempered undergarments associated with the other dress.

He leaned down and whispered, “No thanks needed. I find prefer you in a gown that requires nothing under it. It will make the feast more entertaining for me.”

Nora turned impossibly paler, and his mark on her stood out even more beautifully, now with nothing to hide it. 

When they had finally finished the long walk to the high table, Loki guided Nora to the seat next to his at the left hand of the All-Father’s. “Don’t sit yet, pet. Daddy’s about to make his entrance. No one sits till he does.”

“Yes, thank you for that. I am unbelievably stupid as you know,” she said plainly, causing more gasps from the very important people at the closest tables. No one spoke like that to Loki and did not pay for it. He threw back his head and laughed, making everyone in the room jump. 

“What’s so funny? And why is everyone so freaked out?” 

“They are all wondering what I am going to do to you. And if anyone else is going to be collateral damage in your punishment.”

“Oh, great,” she rolled her eyes, causing more shock. 

“They are also wondering if I am going to be taking up any of my old habits with any of my past lovers now that I am back in Odin’s good graces and home to stay.”

“Please, feel free. I promise not to give a shit.”

Loki grabbed her chin between his thumb and fingers, squeezing just hard enough to make Nora gasp a bit, “Not to fear, pet. You may not be much, but you are utterly mine, which I find very amusing. Mine to pleasure, to punish, to work hard, to ease completely, to have. And then have again. Until I get bored, which I do not imagine happening for oh, months at least. Look, here’s papa.”

He turned her face towards the grand progress of the old god.

It was amazing what the right eyepatch and the aura of absolute power could do for a man. When Loki was a child he had been in awe of his father. The King. The All-Father. His Father. As gloriously strong and abiding as the stars that brightened the skies. Right and (more importantly) convinced of that rightness. An absolute in a universe full of limitations.

Now he saw…the truth. A diminished, fatigued truth, as limited as any other creature. Loki had learned that truth when he had learned the skies were far more void than star.

Still, he had to hand it to Odin, he still knew how to impress the impressionable.

“So, that’s him?” Nora’s voice was a stage whisper, “How did you not know you were adopted?”

Caught off guard, Loki barked an echoing laugh. The entire crowd inhaled with horror, and he could hear the sound of a few hundred overdressed subjects turning their heads back and forth to look from him to Odin and back again. Which made him laugh harder.

“Oh, pet, you are in soooo much trouble….” he hissed through the laugh as the King finished his progress, grandly pretending not to hear.

 

The feast was as lavish, dull, and over-dressed as a North Shore wedding reception. 

Nora sat toying with her food, all of it rather bland in spite of the quality of the ingredients. Apparently fine cuisine was too effete for the warrior culture of Asgard. So was silverware, so she was making due with a spoon and a knife that looked like a prop from an 80s metal video. 

It was all beautiful and impressive, but Nora didn’t have it in her to care. Maybe if she was here under other circumstances. If she was an honored - or at least well-regarded - guest rather than the latest attraction in Loki’s side-show of bad behavior she might be able to appreciate her experience in the hall of the gods.

Once Odin had seated himself and the servants started circulating with pitcher of mead - oh goody - and some weird spiced ale that tasted like Juicy Fruit that had been soaked in floor cleaner, Loki had seemingly forgotten she was there. He had quickly excused himself and started working the room, and so for the last two hours of endless courses of mind-numbing food Nora had nothing to do but watch him and avoid the eye-contact that people were constantly trying to make with her.

While most of the Asgardians who he spoke with looked at best apprehensive and at worst outright terrified, there were a few who were obviously happy to see him.

At the moment he was sprawled in a seat he had appropriated with a slight raise of his eyebrow from a very frightened looking man. On one side of him was a voluptuous redhead with an eager pout and positively aggressive cleavage who was filling his goblet. On the other side of him was one of the most beautiful women Nora had ever seen, a cool blonde with a laugh like clinking ice-cubes. 

Loki saw Nora looking, and he smirked at her, lifting his drink in a mock salute. Then he leaned to whisper something in the blonde’s perfect ear while winding a bit of her hair around his fingers, eyes on Nora’s face the whole time.

That little twist of hair….

“Lorelei and the Enchantress, Amora. They are sisters,” a solemn voice from beside her startled Nora.

Hogun, the man who had tried to talk her down from the Loki Inferno, was seated at her left. He had been so quiet all night she had forgotten he was there. 

“Old friends, that is nice for my hubby,” Nora said, trying to pretend to eat a piece of bread.

“Not friends,” Hogun finally said, after deliberating over his words for a few moments. “Allies. HIs Highness calls almost no one friend. And means it even less often than he says it.”

He looked at her, expressionlessly offering more information, if only she would ask.

“Mistresses, too, I am guessing?” 

“Yes.” He waited.

Nora knew he wanted her to ask more. He had things he could tell her. Things that would help her. Maybe even things that would help Loki.

But right then all she could care about was the blonde hair curled around Loki’s long fingers….

Oh, it hurt. It shouldn’t, but it did, because she knew…because she could really see-

“Where are people going?” She asked.

“Now the formal part of the feast is over.” Hogun pointed to the large doors that had been opened to a court-yard, “Some people will stay here to continue to feast, some will go out of doors to dance and revel, some will slip away to -”

He cleared his throat roughly and blushed.

Nora patted his arm, trying to smile, “I know what people slip away for.” 

For instance her husband and both Lorelei and Amora.

She stood up, “Master Hogun, would you escort me outside? I have always wondered what revels looked like.”

 

Loki strolled through the revelling crowd, Lorelei smirking on one arm, Amora sneering on the other. Everyone made way for them, making obeisance, every servant offering them the first pick of delicacies and filling their goblets to the brim the second a sip was taken. A rich perfume of fear and desire rolled before them like a red carpet.

Just like old times.

How bored he was.

Lorelei had a choice number of capers that she thought might interest him. Amora had an equally choice number of plots. Both together and separately they had an impressive list of new bed-games they had learned in his absence. He smiled. He laughed. He gave the occasional stern look that made them both wet and reminded them of who was who.

Tedious.

They were dreary. Asgard was suddenly dull. The Realm Eternal. Nothing new. Just more plots, more capers, more feasting on the same foods, drinking the same wines, more sexual athletics that were all performance and no emotion. 

Looking over Amora’s head and cross the courtyard he saw Nora on Hogun’s arm, shaking her head at a tray of sweetmeats being offered to her. If she had been with anyone else, anyone, he would have been furious at the insult to his pride and suspicious of their ease together. But Hogun was one of the only creatures he had ever met whose honor was truly stainless. And Nora was the other.

Still, he disliked how relaxed she seemed with the other man. 

Lorelei said something. 

Nora smiled at Hogun. It was just the slightest lift of her lips. Her eyes softened so little, but Loki could see it. 

“My Prince, is all well?” Amora said, looking at where his fists were clenched and then to where his gaze lingered. “Your princess is quite… Midgardian, is she not? Hogun appears to find that quite appealing.” There was a speculative lilt to her voice.

Loki chucked her under the chin, leering coldly at her, “She is very Midgardian, Enchantress. I am sure he finds her freshness a relief from the stale….air of the palace. Now,” he drawled in his most bored tones, “let us go save my little bride from Hogun’s alleged conversation.”

Everyone around gave an appreciative laugh at the expense of a man who was clearly their better and many followed.

By the time they finished their progress Nora and Hogun were standing near a group of musicians who were performing in a corner. Loki winced at the sound, and for once allowed himself to feel nothing but sympathy for his wife. Music was not a highly honored art on Asgard. Save for a few high chants to honor the royal family, martial themes, and the dances performed by peasants, there was little enough of rhythm, and melody was a failed dream.  
It had never occurred to him before what a heroic and forlorn task those who attempted to dance on Asgard undertook. 

After a few moments the musicians stopped. Loki heard Nora whisper to Hogun, “Is the song over, or are they just too depressed to keep going?”

Hogun snorted in surprise and then quickly returned to his legendary stoicism.

Loki gave a fake laugh and a slight clap, “My new princess is a gifted singer and is very judgemental. Actually, that is my favorite quality of hers. The judgmentalness, not the singing. Sadly, as much as I remember enjoying her voice she has not sung for me in so long I cannot recall how it sounded. Perhaps she would favor us with a piece of music from her homeworld?”

‘Please sing,’ he thought, ‘Please let me hear your voice.’

 

Nora looked at Loki as he bloviated for his admirers. He very well knew she had stopped singing around the house when Eddie had complained-

In her mind she saw Loki wrapping that lock of Amora’s golden hair around and around his finger. Like Eddie used to do with her hair when he wanted to reel her in for a kiss-

He cocked his head at her and gave her a half-smile like Eddie used to when he was up to something at work. It usually meant someone was about to lose two weeks of work from their computer or someone else was going to find their car had been booted for non-payment of parking tickets that they insisted they had never gotten-

Eddie.

He really was Eddie. She had known it was true, but there had always been a block because it meant...

It meant…

It meant….

The crowd was staring at her expectantly, since she had just been silently frowning at Loki for a while without realizing it. There was whispering and a bit of laughter at the awkward and weird new girl at God High. Clearly this was the most entertaining thing that had happened on Asgard in centuries. 

“Sure. I’d love to. What’ll it be,” Nora stalked over to the musicians who were clearly terrified to have attracted the attention of the Mad Prince and his Even Madder Wife. One of them had been playing a stringed instrument that would pass for a guitar amongst these tone deaf dickheads. “Bob Dylan? Elvis? Taylor Swift?“ She spat, taking the almost guitar out of the nerveless fingers of the player, put her foot on a chair and started re-tuning it. Or maybe just tuning it for the first time. “There’s an acoustic version of Immigrants Song you’d probably all love. It’s about Thor! I know you’re all down with the big guy.” 

Now there was some nervous murmurs and a few titters from the ever growing crowd. She could even see Odin, one of his ravens on his shoulder, watching from a balcony. The other raven circled overhead and then landed on the back of the woman who had been playing what looked like a bodhran, The poor girl gave a little shriek and started to stand up when the huge bird put a clawed foot on her shoulder, as it to peer over her and get a better look. 

Amora said, in a very mockingly sweet voice, “How lovely that would be, your highness,” she said to Nora.

Nora waved a hand, “As an old friend of Loki’s you don’t have to be so formal. Just call me ma’am.”

Loki snorted at Amora’s sour expression and gave Nora his nastiest smile, “How about a love song, pet? Something for me. My Baby Shot Me Down? Razor Valentine? Du Hast, perhaps?”

Nora snorted but refused to respond. She wasn’t doing private jokes with him ever again.

Then she looked at him, really looked at him, and wondered if he was as impervious as he pretended to be. “Ok, I have something. Nina Simone,” she lifted her head to address the crowd. “This is based on an old folk song from where I am from on Earth. Earth. Terra. Whatever. Not Midgard. This one’s for you, my darling husband.”

Hoping her long untried voice would hold out, Nora sang :

“Black is the color of my true love's hair  
His face so soft and wondrous fair  
The purest eyes  
And the strongest hands  
I love the ground on where he stands  
I love the ground on where he stands

Black is the color of my true love's hair  
Of my true love's hair  
Of my true love's hair

Oh I love my lover  
And well he knows  
Yes, I love the ground on where he goes  
And still I hope  
That the time will come  
When he and I will be as one  
When he and I will be as one

So black is the color of my true love's hair  
Black is the color of my true love's hair  
Black is the color of my true love's hair”

There was an almost violent silence. Loki, for once was not only quiet, but looked as if he was experiencing something towards her other than superiority or lust.

Handing the instrument back to the stunned player, Nora walked until she was nearly nose to chest with Loki, “There, your monkey danced, now can I go back to my cage?”

Whatever had been going on with Loki ended with a snap and a sneer, “Allow me to escort you.”

Lorelei gave him a sassy little wave goodbye, while Amora seethed. Nora shook her head at the blonde, “You can have him any time you want him, sister.”

The einherjar that had been assigned them were caught unawares as Loki swept her back through the feast hall, and they scrambled to catch up with the long-legged prince and the scurrying princess.

“I really hope you chose to eat properly, pet. You will be needing your strength tonight.” he hissed at her.

Nora was so hollow inside she didn’t care. The last little bit of truth had finished rattling around in her brain, falling into place. The man she had loved had lied about loving her. The one thing that had kept her going for three years of marriage, two of them cold and lonely, that Eddie loved her even if he was broken, even if it was hard for him to show it, was simply not true.

Simply not true.

It was the only simply true thing in Nora’s life now. Everything else was a series of complicated lies.

Loki had been continuing to speak but she didn’t hear it, and when they finally returned to his chambers he practically bodily threw poor Ynigvild out. The next thing Nora knew her back was against the wall and a long fingered hand curved over the top of her bodice, “Take a deep breath,” he whispered in her ear, her body shivering at the lick of his words on her skin, his tone annoyed.

In one yank the silk screamed as he killed her dress, tearing it open all of the way to the ground. His other hand gently plucked the tiara from her now undone hair, setting it aside, “I hope you’re wet enough for me,” his voice was irritated, but when he plunged his fingers into her he murmured in pleasure, “You’re always so good for me when it comes to fucking, so obedient. So willing,” he rolled her clit hard between his thumb and for finger and Nora’s back arced away from the wall as she cried out. It hurt and she loved it. Hurt was easy. Simple. 

Like knowing no one had ever been in love with her. 

“Fuck me,” she moaned.

Like knowing that she was in love with Loki. Against all reason, and maybe she just hated herself and that was the reason, she loved him. She had loved him as Eddie and she loved him still as himself. 

“So rude,” Loki put her fingers on the leather thong that laced his trousers closed, “open me then.”

She made quick work of it, only worried about getting his cock out. It throbbed, hot on her skin, leaping at her touch. At least that part of him loved her. A whole lot.

Loki lifted her against the wall, the few shreds of black silk that still hung off of Nora snagging at the straps and embellishments of armor. He held her easily with one hand on her chest, pinning her to the wall while his other hand rubbed his cock hard between her legs, soaking both of them.

Nora struggled, trying to get more. She just wanted to fuck and forget.

“Say please,” he laughed.

Nora wanted to cry. He brushed her lips softly with his, the tiniest bit of moisture from his mouth wetting hers, the touch tender in contrast to his hands, “Say please, princess,” he purred, amused. Another soft kiss, “Say it…” And another, “Just say please and I can be in you. You want me in you…”

“Please,” she whispered.

He rubbed his head against her jaw and throat like a satisfied cat, “Good girl,” and then he thrust, couching himself deeply in her, pounding her against the wall, no longer kissing her. Rather, he held himself as far away from her as he could to watch her face.

Nora closed her eyes, unable to stand that abstract, emotionless gaze. When she came the first time she could swear she heard him laugh. While he continued to fuck into her she found that last warm corner of her heart that belonged to him and closed it off to keep it safe.

 

Loki finished packing the few magical supplies he would need for his latest little job for Odin. He had been told that he would only be gone for a few days, but found himself wishing it would be longer. 

He looked over at Nora who was draped over one of the large chairs by the fire, rereading Jane Eyre again. As if she could feel the stress of his regard she looked up, “Yes?”

For the days since the feast Nora had been barely there. She would speak when spoken to, ate enough at meals to keep him from complaining, read a bit, but there was something vital missing from her. She was neither angry, nor annoyed, she did not fight or spat. When he took her, her body was as responsive as ever, but there was no sense of challenge or satisfaction. She just let him do what he wanted, came as often as he could make her, and then either rolled over to sleep or got up to bathe. As if she had any right to play the wounded doe. She had publicly mocked him, in SONG nonetheless, sweetly crooning words to him that she did not mean and could not feel.

Loki had never felt so alone. 

Well, once, but then he had been falling through the empty place between worlds and it was very hard to be more alone than that.

“I am leaving for my latest venture to make the universe safe for the status quo.”

“Good luck.”

Nora looked blankly at him. Waiting.

It was all he could do not to shake her, to scream his rage into her face, anything to provoke a response, to find the Nora hiding in her. 

But it would have to wait. He was late already.

 

Loki had been gone for two days when the door of the little library where Nora basically lived now burst open. 

“Where is that little viper? I will kill him and bury him myself this time!” Thor roared, blonde hair flying, Mjolnir brandished menacingly.

“Um,” Nora stood up, smoothing down the robe of Loki’s that she wore since he wasn’t around to make fun of her for it, “your dad sent him somewhere.”

“Oh,” her big brother in law looked sheepish, trying to hide the hammer behind his back, “my apologies, Mistress. You are Princess Nora, are you not?”

“I am. And I am guessing you are super pissed that Loki has been alive all of this time and no one told you. As much as I hate to tell you this, that isn’t entirely his fault. Faking his death, yup, but Odin and your buds knew he was alive.”

“And my anger extends to them as well. But not to you. It is my understanding that Loki has made you his dupe as well.”

Nora wanted to laugh at how happy Thor sounded to not be alone in that particular club, but she hadn’t laughed in so long her body couldn’t remember how.

She looked at her tall, beautifully muscled brother in law, at the hurt in his eyes at the thought of his brother deceiving him yet again, the breadth of his chest and the size of his bare, golden arms.

“How would you like to do something with me to get back at Loki?” Nora asked, imitating Loki’s most persuasive tones.

Thor looked askance at her, “What did you have in mind, Princess?”

Nora sat down on the velvet couch she had been laying on, patting the seat next to her, “Why don’t you come over here and I’ll tell you?”


	9. More Interesting, Less Safe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki Does Some Decorating, Nora Settles In For The Long Haul

Loki spent a number of interminable days on the space station Domplaats trying to figure out how, based on eyewitness accounts at least, a “heavily-armed badger or something, and a small, angry plant” stole the prototype for a mining device that was the main feature of a new trade accord between the Rhunians and the Fomalhauti.

  
While it might seem like small beer from the outside, the Rhunians normal “mining” operations involved blowing up suns, and the odd planet - which may or may not be inhabited - to serve their specific energy needs. The Fomalhauti may be small, amorphous blob of matter with a tentacle here and there, but they were quite talented engineers and this particular piece of equipment would allow the Rhunians to gather what they needed from the stars without collateral damage.

  
Both sides were being very cranky about the whole thing, and what was supposed to be a purely economic matter was rapidly moving towards belligerence and mayhem.

  
It also did not help that the devices that the Fomalhauti wore to translate the series of gloppy, bubbling noises that they called a language into the Universal Tongue had voiceprints that had been supplied by adolescents from Orange County. Even the most thoughtful and complex statements from them sounded like they were bored, distracted, and rolling their eyes.

  
When Loki had supplied them he thought it would offer a touch of needed whimsey to the situation. For himself, of course.

  
The Rhunians did not see the humor in it. And the Fomalhauti understood nothing about inflection or tone, so their greater attempts to placate the other side only made things worse. Still, as it occurred to him now that the unthinkable might come to pass, and he might actually fail this mission, it might have been worth skipping the laugh to prevent war breaking out.

  
The head of the Rhunian mining group towered over the Fomalhauti leader, “Do you find this situation tenable?” She bellowed.

  
“Oh gawwwdddd! No-oh! Seriously, I mean, ser-ious-LY!” the Fomalhauti responded with the voice of a fifteen-year old female named Myndi.

  
The Rhunian looked like she was trying to figure out what the Fomalhauti used as a face so she could punch it, when an emergency messenger ran into the room, out of breath.

  
“It’s back!”

  
Loki rose, frowning, “What’s back?”

  
“The mining prototype. It was returned by confederates of the shrub and the … mammal. There was a note.”

  
Written on a crumpled bit of notebook paper, with the fringe from where it had been ripped free, were a few words in purple ink -

 

Sorry, it was a dick move. Rocket says he’s sorry.  
SL  
Under that was another, more roughly scratched addendum:  
No I do not!  
R

  
Loki handed it to one of the the Fomalhauti, who produced a thin tentacle to take it, “Excellent. I am for home then,” he said, rubbing his hands.  
“But-” the Rhunian leader put up a hand.  
He ignored her, wondering who SL was, and if there were perhaps other creatures in the universe that might be working actively against the End of All Things, or if it was just a stupid coincidence.

 

Loki found himself to be displeased to find no one waiting with for him with bad news when he returned to Asgard. No harried Sif reporting that his mad bride had committed a clever new enormity. She had not flooded the palace by sabotaging his bathing pool. No ring-toss onto the horns of the einherjar guarding the doors. Not even a lot of extremely loud singing of dirty drinking songs from near the balcony.

  
He had hoped Nora had come out of her dull lifeless state to cause trouble in his absence. How was she supposed to tell how little he cared for her when she herself seemed to care for nothing?

  
Fine. He would simply have to find a way to rile or perturb her into response. Perhaps something involving -

  
The doors to his chambers were open, and there were no guards present.

  
Pulling a dagger, Loki slowly approached, his steps quiet, listening.

  
From within a deep, hatefully familiar voice said, “And where shall I put it now, Mistress?” from the area of his receiving chamber.

  
“Um, I told you before, anywhere you want is fine with me…”

  
Nora was slightly breathless, but sounded deeply pleased. She then made a soft groan, as she always did to accompany a languid, lazy stretch of her arms over her head.

  
Black fury clouded Loki’s thoughts and seeped like poison through every part of him. It felt good. Familiar. Like an old lover - since he had no old friends to compare the feeling to. He gave himself a moment to calm and fixed a sardonic smile to his lips. The he sheathed his blade and slowly sauntered into the room, determined to let no feeling reveal itself on his face, regardless of what horrific sight straight from his darkest nightmares he should witness within.

  
He failed.

  
It simply was not possible….

  
His elegant, spare receiving chamber had been transformed into a microcosm of Nora’s aunt’s ridiculous little bungalow. The old, ratty bookcases that had crammed the attic where they had slept were lined up on the far wall with stacks of boxes that overflowed with the books that had come from them on the floor before them. The kitchen table was set up near the balcony, complete with the novelty New Orleans salt and pepper shakers and the old blue plastic glass filled with random straws, swizzle sticks, and other ephemera. Two laundry baskets, one full of items from the kitchen and the other from the bathroom, were partially shoved under it.

  
Including a half-dozen large bags of coffee from Bridgeport Roasters, which made Loki’s traitorous heart race with anticipation and joy.

  
Odds and ends of furniture were scattered here and there - the shedding grey ‘velvet’ settee that Nora liked to read and drink coffee while laying on in the morning, a small and surprisingly pretty table of inlaid wood that had been a gift to Aunt Claire from a world-travelling lover, though thankfully not their, no, Nora’s Purgatorially miserable bed.

  
Five overstuffed lawn and leaf bags threatened to give way and flood the space with Nora’s clothing and shoes.

  
“Oh, you’re back,” he heard Nora say in a dull voice.

  
She was on the dais (bringing back uncomfortable but delicious memories of what he had done to her on that very space shortly before leaving) with Thor, who was holding the immense, ancient cabinet hi-fi from the living room, while Nora unpacked records. She had not removed his throne, but simply shoved it to the side to accommodate the sofa and coffee-table.

  
She had also dressed herself in the traditional costume of her people - yoga pants and a ratty White Sox t-shirt from the 2005 World Series, complete with a mustard stain near the hem.

  
“Just put that down, buddy, I can figure out where I want it to go later,” she said smiling a little as she patted the bunched muscles in Thor’s shoulder.

  
Thor refused to look towards Loki as he gently set the hi-fi down, “I shall check upon you tomorrow and see if you have further need of me,” he gave Nora a soft smile, kissing her cheek and tugging a piece of hair that had fallen from the messy ponytail she had pulled it into. While he was leaned in, Thor shot Loki an amused look and whispered something into her ear.

  
Nora laughed. Not loudly, just a small, amused exhale, but a laugh still.

  
Salty nausea flooded Loki’s mouth. When had he last heard Nora laugh? Never on Asgard, certainly, but even before that. He once, in the early days of her and Eddie, had made Nora laugh easily and often. He had adored that wild, snorting mess of a laugh that would overtake her at times, until she waved her hands, her face bright red, and she begged him for mercy.

  
But he had been merciless.

  
Once he had her gasping he would go in for the kill, any bad joke or stupid line, tickling even, to leave her in a limp and smiling heap. Then, when she could not fight at all, he would kiss her, stealing the last of her breath.  
When had he last made her laugh? He could not recall.

  
“Goodbye, little sister,” Thor said at last and left, not looking at Loki again, but stepping around him the way he might a soggy pile a feces on the thoroughfare.

  
When the door clicked behind his brother, Loki finally spoke.

  
“What exac-”

  
“No.”

  
He stopped, confused. “No, what?”

  
“No about your complaint, or your being angry,” Nora sat herself on the old, armless sofa, her voice back to dull and tired, “I don’t care. Do whatever you want to me. Fuck me into submission or at least exhaustion. Make me wear stupid things I hate. Keep me locked up. Hell, get rid of my stuff even, now that I have it here and could maybe be at least a little less than miserable which I know isn’t part of your plan. You’re going to anyway, but just don’t make me listen to you talk shit any longer. That I really can’t take.”

  
She looked at him expressionlessly, a slight shrug at the end of what wasn’t even a tirade so much as an admission of resignation and a plea for mercy.

  
He was still merciless.

 

“What exactly did you offer my foolish brother to aid you in your remodeling?” Loki asked calmly, having ignored everything she had said. “I hate what you’ve done to the place, by the way. But never mind, as no one will see it but you and your unfortunate maid I suppose it does not matter.”

  
“I offered him the look on your face when you saw him and me together. And all of my tacky garbage in your chambers. He jumped at it.”

  
Fuck and double-fuck, Nora thought, looking at him as he draped himself on the other end of the small couch. Was it fair or even reasonable that being apart for a week she would find herself starving for the sight of him even at the same time that it hurt so damned bad?

  
Loki abruptly pivoted on the seat and stretched out, putting his head in her lap. “I am weary from my travels, pet. I had thought to take you to bed with me upon my return, but I find myself too tired to even move. Perhaps a nap here.” His fingers walked across the slightly scratchy upholstery. “Do you recall our first anniversary? This very piece of furniture? I do….”

  
Nora did remember. She forced herself to not squirm and rub her thighs together at the memory. Instead she futily pushed at Loki’s shoulder, trying to roll him off of her lap as she struggled to stand. He effortlessly resisted her, the weird surges of strength she had before now gone, so while she was stronger than before she was not up to moving his dense weight.

  
Instead, he rolled the other way, his nose brushing the v of her lap. That light touch on that sensitive place made her jump. Rather than laughing as Nora expected, Loki took a deep breath, his eyes closing in pleasure with a feathery flutter of his raven-wing lashes.

  
Damn his face.

  
“You do recall. Or it is simply your devoted husband’s return to your side that makes your cunt smell so divine and untended to? Just allow me to rest my eyes for a bit and I will take good care of you.” His voice was sleepy and soft, and he reached up to pat her on the head like he would a faithful dog.

  
Nora flinched. Life was easier when he wasn’t here. Too bad she found herself hating it when it was easy.

  
When he lifted his head a bit to see her expression she used her chance to slip out from under him.

  
Instead of leaving the room, she picked up one of the stacks of albums she had managed to sort through and carried them to the hi-fi, sticking them in the storage space next to the turntable. “I don’t know why Thor brought this. I certainly haven’t seen any outlets around this place. At first, when he showed up looking for you I thought maybe he’d be able to get me out of here. Break whatever spell you put on this place. Take me home.  
“Unfortunately your big brother may know less about magic than I do. He told me some of the shit you used to pull on him because of it. So then I thought, if he was heading back to earth anyway maybe he could get me some of my stuff. All I wanted him to bring back was some of my clothes, shoes, all the things you don’t want me to wear. The pile of books on next to the bed…. but then we’d start talking and he would ask me about my life, and he’d bring more things and more things. Like if he couldn’t get me to my life he’d bring it to me.

  
“He’s very thoughtful. Your brother. It was nice to have a friend,” Nora traced her fingers through the dust on the top of the hi-fi. Dust from Chicago, brought all of the way to Asgard. Now it was royal dust, she thought. “But I’m guessing you won’t want me hanging out with him. So that’s over.”

  
It was hard to keep her voice unemotional. To not have it tremble. She gave Loki a side look, wondering what he was thinking.

  
His eyes were still closed, his breathing deep and measured. He was asleep.

  
Nora managed to stifle a sob until she was in the hall.

  
She wasn’t going to be able to do this much longer.

 

That night Loki was positively humming with energy and vigor, clearly refreshed by his long nap that afternoon. While Nora picked at dinner he talked. And talked. And talked. He told her in excruciating detail about his brilliance solving the dispute that Odin had sent him to negotiate. He made running commentary on how frumpy she looked in her own dismal clothing. He idly discussed with himself the flaws and merits of their meal and that no matter her taste or mental state, how he expected her to eat more of it. That stream of consciousness was periodically interrupted by his holding a spoonful of something to her mouth, refusing to move it until she took a bite, even if he had to practically chase her around the table to get her to comply.

  
All the while talking to her as if she was a balky child and then crooning how proud he was of her and how good she was whenever she ate anything.

  
The worst part for Nora was that as much as he was driving her crazy with the incessant and condescending noise, she adored hearing him talk. The dark, gorgeous sound of him, the strange hush and perfect diction. His voice was every decadent and dangerous thing that good girls ran away from and that she had always dawdled her way towards.

  
When the testimonial to himself finished with the end of the meal, Loki stood and held out his hand to her.

  
“What?”

  
“This is a universally understood signal for you to take my hand and come with me, pet. Do not pretend to be stupid now.”

  
“I mean what do you want with me? Where are we going?”

  
“I have something to show you.”

  
“Oh, that’s going to be wonderful,” she said, taking his hand anyway.

  
In a rather mock grand style he led her down the hallway and back to the doors of his audience hall. Nora tried not to sigh out loud, waiting for him to push the doors open and show all of her things gone and then fuck her on that uncomfortable throne of his again, once again in the most vulnerable position he could put her in.

  
Or, just as likely, her things would be in a smoldering pile in the middle of the room as revenge for her own tiny inferno.

  
Rather, he waited, gesturing towards the door. “Now I am making a universally understood signal for you to open the door, little princess. Did you take a blow to the head from my brother by any chance? He tends to flail his arms when talking and he has given everyone a hard if accidental buffet at one time or another. It’s a wonder his dainty lover has survived so long.”

  
Nora ignored all of that and opened the door. Before she could doing anything else Loki was behind her, hands hard on her shoulders, pushing her into the room.

  
It was…

  
Not only had Loki moved and unpacked her things, making the room comfortable and neat, he had brought the couches, most of the books, and somehow the fireplace from the small library, making her a space of her own within his.

  
Even the smell - coffee, the green from the herb plants she had almost nearly killed in the kitchen, the shampoo she liked, and the ghostly echoes of Claire’s cigarettes and Django’s fur - was comfortable.

  
“Why did you do this?” she whispered, afraid to talk louder.

  
“It occurred to me that you would be more … docile if you had your own domicile,” he whispered as well, but close to her ear. Which he then licked, his very tip of his agile tongue deftly swirling from the outer shell to gently prod the center, all in one smooth motion.

  
She would have fallen backwards if he hadn’t been holding her, and caught off guard by the unprecedented act of kindness, Nora moaned and pushed back against him.

  
One of his long hands caressed her throat. Hard. Squeezing where it met her clavicle. His other hand worked its way under her shirt, gently stroking her stomach. “I am going to debauch you here in your little safe haven, Nora, just so you understand that you have this because I allow it,” he squeezed tighter, just enough to mark her. “Everything you have or do not have is because of me. From me. Every scrap of clothing, every word you read, every time you orgasm, everything is due to my sufferance. Even this room where you think you will be able to hide from that truth.”

  
He loosened his grip on her throat but left his hand there like a necklace.

  
“Now, say thank you and kiss me, Pet.”

  
Nora turned awkwardly under his touch, and his hand was deep in her hair to anchor her in place while he stared into her eyes. Her lips were painfully dry as were her eyes, and she refused to look away, “Thank you, Loki.” Then she slid her hands up his chest, her fingertips pressing slightly into his muscles, the heel of her palms just barely touching the silk of his tunic.

  
He’d gone too far and so now she could do this. She could let him fuck her, and she could feel nothing. And that belief lasted until her lips touched his.

  
His mouth opened over hers, and hers opened without a thought or hesitation, and their tongues stroked and teased, each having clearly missed the taste and feel of the other. Her arms wrapped around his neck like they would around a lover and not just someone who fucked her when the mood struck, and his arms were around her waist, lifting her the rest of the way into the room.

  
By the time he had laid her out on the couch, Nora had already removed her shirt and bra, and Loki followed her down, still kissing her. She grabbed the back of his tunic and yanked it hard enough to rip, just wanting his skin on her’s. “Careful, you ruined most of my wardrobe already,” he laughed, pulling it the rest of the way off.

  
His skin was warm and cool, like touching a marble statue that was in the sun. Before she could enjoy the feel of his weight compressing her lungs and crushing her breasts, he had slithered down her body, pulling her pants off, “Tsk, soaked through,” he shook his head, and then buried his face in the crumpled cloth, taking deep lungfuls of her scent in then tossing them aside.

  
“Why waste my time?” he asked, still endlessly speaking to himself. He lay flat between her legs, then pushing one up over the top of the sofa and placing the other so her foot was on the floor, “Don’t move these, or I will bite you hard enough to leave a mark. Actually, feel free to move them. It would be a pleasure to give you a scar in a place that only I would ever see it. A sweet, private intimacy between spouses, yes?”

  
Nora stayed perfectly still, and he laughed against her clit, making her hips jerk towards him.

  
His tongue - so clever, lying to her even now as he used it to make what seemed like love to her - laved gently at her opening, his right hand spread possessively over her lower stomach so his thumb tapped and then rubbed, tapped and then rubbed and then circled, and then on and on against her clit.

  
From time to time he would switch them, and then back.

  
His other hand gripped the inside of her elevated thigh, squeezing the thin flesh, his nails imprinting there.

  
Unable to stop herself, Nora circled her pelvis, trying not to move her legs but trying to get him to stick with one thing, to get him to let her finish. Her cunt beat like a heart to pull his tongue further in. Her whole body wanted to arc into the pleasure he gave her and have it keep going. Her whole body wanted its release.

At some point Loki let go of her thigh, and now that hand was under her, his fingers…

  
She jolted hard as she felt one finger stroke along her anus, slick with something warm, almost hot. “Shhh, my exquisite princess, let your prince make you very happy,” he purred against her wet, his breath blowing strangely cold, making her more sensitive.

  
That warm, lubricious finger softly, gently worked its way into her, his tongue teasing just the very tip of her clit, toying with her hood, and then his other hand was also between her legs, a long, finger there taking her as well.  
The two fingers pressed on the same spot on either side of the divide between her cunt and her ass, circling identically, as if trying to touch each other.

  
“Too full, too…” Nora didn’t know what she was saying, only that everything was overwhelming. Forgetting everything but what she needed right then, Nora wrapped her legs around Loki’s head and pushed her spasming cunt up so she took and took and then she started to tremble and beg.

  
Loki did everything a little harder.

 

Keening and locking her legs to keep the orgasm that overwhelmed her going in hot, luscious waves, Nora barely felt it when Loki pushed her legs apart again and quickly bit her just at the juncture where the inside of her thigh met her groin, leaving a deep, slightly bleeding half-moon of tooth-marks. Then he kissed the spot, whispering a spell against her skin to ensure it would heal cleanly and with an everlasting scar.

  
Crawling back up her body as she still shook with little, splendid tremors, he admired the deep flush of her skin, the sweat that soaked into the ugly cushions below her, the dazed, helpless, vulnerable quality of her stretched neck, her open mouth, her stunned eyes.

  
A better creature would gather her to him. Kiss her until she was calmed. Tell her how beautiful she was in her ecstasy and how much he-

  
Loki shook off the thought and instead fucked into her as hard as he could, catching a moan in her throat. Instead of pushing at him, Nora locked her calves around his, too weak to wrap his waist, and gave the lovely, musical hitch of a sigh that she gave when she was most perfectly pleasured and sated, when she was simply delighted in the contact with his skin.

  
He hadn’t heard her make that sound since… he like her laugh, he couldn’t remember the last time he had heard it.

  
His body reacted to it like a hound reacted to catching the scent of it’s master, and he found himself plunging artlessly into Nora, only needing to be as close as he could, only wanting her to come again. He kissed her neck, whispering his secret name for her as he did, and the completion took them both like wildfire.

  
Afterwards, she tried to pull herself away, tried to retreat from him again, but this time he refused to allow it, and rather he pulled her against his body, making his arms, his leg, his will a cage. “Sleep, pet. A nap. I have more plans for you tonight and you will need your rest.”


	10. She was no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring because yesterday has brought it.  (With apologies to Neil Gaiman)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki Takes Stock, Nora Takes a Nap

As much as he always desired to ignore the truth, Loki had to admit to himself that there was something terribly wrong with Nora.

For the time since he had returned from his last mission she had been quieter even than before, rarely answering when he spoke to her unless he repeated himself a few times, and then only in the sparest of words.  
She had her courses, and even though it would not distress him to take her then (indeed, there was something salacious about taking a woman in that state, especially one that had to be seduced past their blushes and shame, that he had always adored), he let her be. For that month at least.

The day they ended, he had stopped her in the hallway, intent on taking her there, no longer able to wait. But she had been so passive, her body wet, but her mind far away. That had withered even his unrelenting need for her. When he let her go, she just wandered away from him without a word.

After that, no matter how desperately he wanted Nora, Loki he could not, would not touch her.

She had not even retreated to her little Midgard Cave as he thought she might. After the night when he had arranged it for her, she seemed to lose interest in it and rather spent most of her time in the bedchamber either staring out the windows or sleeping.

Pulling every throw and blanket over her, Nora would burrow her nose beneath the stacks of cushions and sleep with a will to oblivion.

At least he knew that for the first time since arriving on Asgard she was getting enough rest.

Eating was another matter.

More worryingly, he could not say the last time she had picked up a book.

That day, Odin had called him to the royal presence (lucky him) with his newest assignation with goodness. “You will be away tomorrow. The Vana-”

“No.”

Odin leaned forward on the throne, his eye flashing grimly, “No? I do not recall offering you the freedom of saying me nay, my son.”

“Firstly, stop calling me that. Secondly, no-, the princess is unwell. I cannot in good conscience - yes, it is very funny I said that Volstagg, so please continue to laugh like a buffoon - leave until I know she is in no danger. That is what you would expect of the doting husband you like to pretend I am, is it not, _Your Majesty_?”

“If you scorned the woman as much as you pretend, _Loki_ , then you would leave without a thought. Very well, you may have a day or two longer to see to your wife. Three at the longest. I will send Volstagg and Sif to look after the situation until you arrive.”

Loki shuddered. “Yes, because sending a depilated bear and ‘The Girl Who Could Not Spell Diplomacy’ into a delicate situation is the clever choice.”

The growl that Volstagg gave did little to convince Loki he had been incorrect in his assessment.

Loki found himself walking slowly back through the halls of the palace, not certain what good he had done by delaying his departure.

His day was then brightened further by the sight of Thor and Hogun walking towards him.

Since seeing him in his chambers, Loki had managed to avoid Thor, aided no doubt by Thor’s desire to avoid him as well. Still, there had been an ominous heaviness to the air, as if the weather was close to taking a turn for the violent and stormy, and he was fairly certain it was only a matter of time before his brother decided to clear the air between them with a few well placed hammer blows.

Perhaps now, even. Loki could see the ends of his own hair raising up as the atmosphere became similarly charged as the scowl on Thor’s face at the sight of him.

Truly, he found himself craving the exchange of blows, even if it were almost certain he would be the loser. He deserved any number of punches to the face.

Rather, other than a small, polite bow from Hogun, and Thor giving him what once on Midgard would have been called the cut direct, they passed without incident.

When he reached his chambers the little spy-cum-maid was waiting just inside the door, actually wringing her hands.

“What?” He barked, not even enjoying the terror on the maid’s face.

“My mistress. She… she fell, sire.”

“What?” Loki ran towards the bathing chamber where the girl had pointed.

 

Nora was laying half on, half off of the chaise beside the bathing pool, and was struggling to pull herself the rest of the way up. “Yngvild shouldn’t have bothered you,” she said, her voice rough with disuse, her underfed muscles unable to lift her even the little way to the seat. Again. “I just wanted to get in the water for a while.”

Loki loomed over her, the way he liked to, “I thought we were through with these side effects,” his clipped voice dripping irritation down on her. Then he bent at the knees and lifted her up into his arms, “It is probably best you did not make it all of the way. You might have been unsafe in the water.”

Without thinking about it, Nora gave a shrug. Which scared her a little. It wasn’t what she wanted, or even had been considering. She had just been sore from being in bed so much lately and hot water sounded not terrible.

For days nothing had seemed terrible or good. Food. Reading. Fighting. Sex. Her belongings being there. Loki. Nora didn’t want any of them, nor did she not want them. She had a heart full of nothing for everything. Only sleep was o.k., because feeling nothing was also strangely exhausting.

Loki neither moved nor spoke.

“What?” she asked, trying to stand.

His hands squeezed into her thigh and side, no doubt giving her the gift of more of his proprietary marks, “What are you alluding to with that little gesture?” His voice was frozen.

In fact, suddenly the whole room felt colder. No, not just colder but plain cold.

“Nothing. You can put me down now, I feel better,” her voice was still weak.

He paid no attention to what she wanted. Of course. “That. Little. Gesture. What do you mean by it?”

“Nothing. I shrugged.”

“You SHRUGGED at _drowning_ , Nora.”

Again, unthinkingly, she shrugged, and then mumbled, “Are you annoyed because you’d have to find another pet? Don’t worry. You’d do fine.” Her nervousness at her own response to the idea of dying was giving her a little emotion back. “Anyway, I don’t especially want to die. I just...I don’t know what difference it makes either way.”

The room was freezing. Nora shivered and would have tucked closer into Loki, but he was freezing as well.

He looked at her, shocked, and for a moment his eyes were a deep, burning red.

“What the-”

Loki put her down, one hand on her waist to keep her steady, the other slowly forming a fist as he brought something in himself under control. The room and his body temperature both returned to normal, and when he looked at her again, his eyes were green.

“I am not… I was not born Asgardian,” he said, as if that should mean something to her. As if she should care. Then, he pulled her robe open and off, tossing it to the side, and picked her back up. He glowed faintly gold as he disapparated his clothing. “Let me bathe you, Nora. I promise it shall not be like the last time.”

Being undressed in front of Loki had become meaningless to her. Maybe it was something about how he insisted on calling her ‘pet,’ all of the time. Pets didn’t think about being naked, did they?

He sounded strange.

It took her a minute to realize that he sounded sincere.

“Do I have a choice?”

He snorted, “No.”

“Ok,” When she went to step into the bathing pool he went ahead of her and just lifted her down into the water.

“Is the temperature comfortable for you?”

Nora just looked at him, “What?”

“I asked-”

“It’s just been so long since I’ve had a preference considered I think I’ve forgotten how to have one,” she said, sinking down. “But it could be hotter. Whatever.”

He stood above her, just staring at her. “At least that had the shade of the old you to it. Say when you are comfortable.”

The water slowly began to warm, “Sorry…. that’s fine,” Nora said when she could feel a trickle of sweat down her temple.

“What are you sorry for?”

“‘The old me,’ I know you don’t like her,” the water felt good enough that she pushed off the bottom and coasted on the shallow water farther into the pool.

He followed her, putting a hand to her stomach, as if to keep her from slipping beneath the surface. “Do you care what I like?” His voice was tart and ironic, “I would have thought that dislike would be a trophy that you would polish and keep in a prominent place.”

Again, she shrugged.

Suddenly she was upright, and then up, almost out of the pool, being shaken in a torrent of water, Loki’s hands rough on her, “Fight me, damn you! I know you are not weak!” It hurt her sore muscles, but as with everything lately, even that felt muffled.

He stopped, and she hung in his hands. His face was stricken.

Nora touched his jaw, her finger-tips skimming his damp skin. Then she met his eyes. The way the droplets hung from his unfairly long lashes made it look like he had been crying.

“I’m tired. It’s easier to give up. What was I going to get out of fighting, anyway? I don’t have any hope of winning.”

For a few moments he said and did nothing. Which was a relief. Finally, he simply said, “Let us wash your hair.”

 

After they had finished bathing, Loki had carried Nora carefully from the pool and set her firmly on one of the rugs, unreasonably afraid that she might slip and fall into the water if he put her on the tiles. While she stood, silent and listless, he toweled her dry with as much thorough gentleness as he could manage.

She just watched him as he moved her limbs and touched her everywhere, disinterested but having nothing else to look at.

When she was finally dressed again in a loose gown, and he had attired himself, he took her hand. Rather than snatching it away, she let it lay limply in his.

It took considerable effort to not fall onto his knees and bury his face in her skirts and beg Nora to come back from wherever she had hidden herself.

Instead, he gave her a haughty eyebrow lift, “We shall eat now. And I will feed you again if I must.”

He waited for her to respond to his pronouncement.

“I’m too tired to eat.”

Loki wished she would try to stab him again.

He would let her.

“Well, we know how much your wishes matter to me, do we not?”

After eating enough to satisfy Loki, Nora went back to bed and fell quickly back to sleep.

Once he knew she would not easily wake, he crawled in as well, wrapping himself around her and holding on, his heart feeling full to bursting with what seemed to be metal shavings and blight. Nora had touched him under her own volition for the first time today, and told him that she did not care if she lived or died.

By Bor! She hadn’t even the strength to care about his near slip into his Jotunn form.

Somehow he had missed… no he had ignored, had pretended not to see that in his flailing and pitiful attempts to protect himself in the guise of protecting her he had been slowly extinguishing Nora’s vital fire. Loki was desperate to find a way to exonerate himself, to say he could not be faulted because she was so strong, so stubborn. She had found a way to survive New York. She had born marriage to Eddie with grace if not always good humor. His assumption of her unbreakable spirit had been his excuse for his own cruelty.

Nora could take it.

Except, of course, she could not. New York had left her trapped in her own beloved city, plagued on and off by nightmares for years after. She had woken him with one just a few weeks prior to Sidira giving Eddie his surprise, demigod makeover. And now she was trapped across the universe from the only place she felt safe.

And of course she could not, because Eddie had eaten away at her confidence as surely as rising water ate at the shoreline.

And of course she could not because he had spent a thousand years studying spite and narcissism and she was a young woman who had been amputated from her life and condemned to five thousand years imprisoned with a creature that would drip venom onto her heart until she was hollow.

Loki softly stroked the curved scar behind Nora’s ear. He had been surprised that when she had been regenerated by Idunn’s apple that it had not faded as the few other marks upon her had - the burn on the sole of her foot from where she had stepped on a still lit cigarette her aunt had half-stubbed out on their lawn, the thin line on her knee from a roller skating accident in college - were both gone.

Now, along with the bite he had placed upon her the last time he had had her, she had two permanent pieces of evidence of the damage he could do.

She moved in her sleep, lifting her chin and pressing into his fingers.

He sighed to himself and then whispered, “Nora?”

She made a sleepy sound of curiosity.

“I am going to undress you.”

“Again?” she said, half awake.

“Yes.”

He passed his free hand over her and then himself, removing their clothing.

“Cold,” she muttered, turning towards him to bury as much of herself as she could under him. Her skin on his eased some of the pain in his chest, unworthy of the cure though he might be. Loki drew the furs over them and she gave a small sigh.

“Better?”

He felt her nod and fall back asleep.

Loki whispered against Nora’s hair, “I have not done good for another in so long as to it might as well not have happened. I am as self-centered as I am vain, and as vain as I am broken. I cannot let you go. Even if were not for the danger to you, I could not. But I promise to find a way to…”

He did not even know what he was offering. To fix her somehow? By what qualifications? His own sterling history of sanity and not self-harming? His great sensitivity to the suffering and autonomy of others? Was he going to trick Nora into well-being? Manipulate her back to her natural brightness and fortitude?

Then he thought.

“Why not?”

 

A warm, deep voice that she knew but didn’t sound right was speaking to her, “Time to wake, treasure.”

What?

She rolled over and then sat up, blinking. Loki was sitting on the edge of the bed beside her. “What did you call me?”

“Treasure. Here, this is for you,” he picked up one of her mugs from home, the one Eddie had bought her that said “Stay Sexy and Don’t Get Murdered,” and was covered in handpainted, dainty pink flowers and curling vines.

It was filled with coffee. Perfectly brewed, black, Stockyard blend from Bridgeport Coffee.

She had completely forgotten that she had asked Thor to bring her some. She idly wished she could have seen him purchasing it. She hoped Jennie had been working that day.

“Oh fuck…” she hissed, carefully plucking it from his long fingers. When she finally came up for air Loki was looking at her. His face was strange.

“Is something wrong with your face? It looks weird.”

“I believe that would be called a smile. Though with the way you are treating that cup I feel I should warn you I am jealous god. Now finish up like a good girl and then get dressed. I am having my father’s spy pack clothing for you, but you should supervise, and select your own reading materials, and anything else you will want over the next few weeks. More coffee certainly. They do not have it on Vanaheim, either.”

“What?”

“Vanaheim. The people are a bit… vapid, but the scenery is quite pretty. Now up.”

For the next hour Loki chivvied Nora along, not letting her take a breath as he made certain she dressed in her favorite, soft jeans that were now too loose on her, a heavy black sweater, and her hiking boots, all the while ordering Yngvild to do this thing and then that, as well as preparing his own bags. From time to time he would press a bit of cake or a piece of fruit to Nora’s lips, insisting that she take just a few bites and then going to do something else before she had time to wonder what he was up to.

He even hummed a bit.

Something by Nick Cave.

Finally, everything prepared to his satisfaction, Loki grinned madly at the maid, “Now, your mistress and I are about to go into my workroom. You will wait until your silly, racing heart beats one thousand times plus one hundred more before you report to the AllFather what we are about or when I return I will sew you into the skins of ninety-nine living mice and throw you to Freya’s cats.”

The girl made a sound and scurried off while Loki ushered Nora into his workroom and then went back for their luggage.

Loki had made a point of not allowing her into his inner sanctum. In fact it was the only space in his chambers that had not been christened by their shared bodily fluids, so Nora found herself slightly interested in spite of her general torpor.

The room was wide and shallow, dominated by long, rather high wooden table that had countless gouges, burn-marks, and discolourations. It was currently bare and gleamed with a recent polishing. Beneath it were a number of trunks in different styles and made of different materials.

Behind it were countless shelves holding … everything. All of it neatly placed and well cared for.

Certainly books - grimoires, Books of Shadows, treatises on magic, philosophy, science, politics, sex, and advanced mathematics, a few cookbooks, a handful of Moleskine notebooks, a set of matching volumes of what looked like some old pulp novels that were sealed in glass case with a silver key lock, stacks of papers held together with twine and rubber bands, and more.

Another held numerous jars and bottles of various shapes, sizes, and materials. None of them marked. One of them, what looked like an Asgardian mason jar, held some pink sludge that made an unpleasant humming noise. A tall vial holding feathers let off a puff of fragrant smoke every few seconds. What looked like a tiny dragon perched on a branch inside of what looked for all of the world like a terrarium.

Nora leaned in to get a better look. It blinked at her sadly.

She started to touch the lid.

“I would not let O-verk fool you into letting him free. He may look innocent, but I promise that he is not. Especially where male genitalia are concerned. And while I know I am far from your favorite creature I am reasonably confident that you are mildly more fond of that part of me than of the rest.”

Nora was feeling very slow, and she often found it useful to ignore some of the things Loki said, “Why does the air feel like that? And what’s that smell?”

He ignored her right back, instead pulling out one of the trunks to rummage around in. First he pulled out what looked like a canvas sack with a long strap, the body of it the size of a brown paper lunch-bag. He shoved both Nora and his considerable luggage into it.

Then he dug around again, this time producing what looked like a pile of green velvet, “Excellent. I knew I should keep this.”

Before she could stop him, Loki had put on her a long winter coat, with golden buckles, and a white fur lining, collar, and cuffs. It had clearly been his at one point, as it was deeply impregnated with his scent of stone and winter trees. And it hung past Nora’s feet, her hands deep in the too long sleeves.

Laughing down at the sight of her, but with what might almost seem like affection, he pulled her hair from under the collar, and with a twist of his fingers the whole coat altered to fit her perfectly. “The paths can be very cold, even to one fortified with Idunn’s fruit,” he said, giving her the canvas bag.

It felt empty and weighed nothing.

“Now,” he pushed one of the shelves out of the way, revealing what looked like a crude drawing of a door painted in something brown and streaky.

When Loki’s hand brushed where the handle was drawn there was a creaking noise of wood and rock and the drawing protruded and altered until it was an actual door with an actual handle.

It worried Nora that she wasn’t more surprised than she was.

Loki pulled it open and then turned to her, bowing with a smirk, “Do you feel up to walking, or shall I carry you again, princess?”

“Where did you say we are going?”

Shaking his head, Loki swept her into his arms and through the door, “Let us call it a working honeymoon, shall we?”


	11. There’s No Place Like Someone Else’s Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki eases up. Nora lets go.

The great estate sprawled through forested lands and over softly rolling hills. There was a massive series of tiers on the mountain behind it where farmers dressed in white and brown tending to something green and fern-y looking. Just beyond the carved wooden doors that were open onto a massive flagstone veranda was a garden of herbs, flowers, and fruit trees that were heavily budding in the cool, wet air.

It was astonishingly pretty. Everything smelled good, too.

Nora leaned on one of the doors to the veranda, sipping coffee, the bottom of her aunt’s ancient housecoat rippling in the breeze. 

“Here is breakfast. Eat something, highness,” said Diole, as she set a tray on the small table just inside the doors. As ever the old woman didn’t act like servant. 

Nora found her a huge relief after the terrified Yngvild and the barely concealed disgust (and terror) of the few other servants she had had dealing with on Asgard. Everyone had dreaded dealing with their mad prince and were disdainful, but wary of his crazy, alien wife. Diole treated them like vacationers who were staying at the AirBnB she was forced to run due to falling on hard times and resented their disturbing her.

The astringent quality of the elegant, fine-boned woman, and the gently beautiful surroundings that she could actually walk out into - in which she could breath - had both helped Nora feel at least half-awake for a the first time in weeks. Grumpy Diole had even, ungraciously, consented to allowing her to assist in the kitchen a bit. Not cooking, but fetching and carrying. 

Slowly, Nora was starting to feel as if some of her muscles were starting to unkink. As she seated herself, not only was she slightly hungry, but she considered it might be nice to grab her copy of “Purity,” and go lose herself in that tangled garden for a few hours of reading this morning.

Maybe in the afternoon she might even want to walk into the little town just outside of the estate gates… She might, possibly, be looking forward to both things.

“Excellent. I am starved,” came a pleased voice from the stairs.

Of course Loki was there as well.

Nora served herself some fruit and a pastry. Before he took his seat across from her Loki stood behind her, leaning over the back of her chair and put some cheese, a few sausages, and another pastry on her plate. His hair brushed her cheek, and for a second it felt like he had kissed her. It was the most physical contact there had been between them since arriving.

“There, that’s a proper amount of food,” he said, and then took his own place and simply started eating off of the tray.

They had been on Vanaheim for a few weeks. They had left his workroom through a door that was not a door, and walked hand in hand (once she had convinced Loki that she was strong enough to walk at all) for hours or more through a kind of echoing brown and yellow darkness that was pitch cold and full of nothingness and ended up on in this green, hazy place. Frugvyrki. 

It had been the home of Loki’s mother before she had married Odin. Now, it seemed, it was Loki’s.

When they had arrived, entering the world through another door that was not a door, in another workroom situated much like Loki’s had been on Asgard, they had been met by an old, elegant woman with ankle length lavender and grey braids, holding a thin bladed sword in one hand and what looked like a space-aged blunderbuss in the other.

In spite of her being more than a foot shorter than he was, Loki quickly put up his hands, “Now, Diole, haven’t you heard that daddy has forgiven me and taken me back into the fold? I know it takes a while for news to get here but-”

The woman spat on the floor, “For that fool, your father,” then she shrugged and sheathed the sword and holstered the gun, and gave him a quick, gruff hug, “And that for your mother. I hope this is a quick trip. Come with me - this is your wife I assume - come with me princess, you need some hot wine. Walking between the worlds is terrible if you aren’t used to it. And you too, I suppose. I am sure you are out of practice, so I can get you something, too.”

“It is my house, Diole. My wine.”

She shrugged and ignored him, taking Nora’s arm and leading her away. 

After that brief bit of hospitality Diole had made it clear she was ready for them to leave at any time. Loki had told her that they would be there for several weeks, maybe a few months, depending on how something went with something he was doing with some people, somewhere on the planet (Nora had been so tired after the cold walk and the warm wine that she had fallen asleep during his explanation).

For the time of their stay, Loki would disappear from the estate for hours at a time, no doubt doing… whatever it was he was there to be doing. Nora for the first day did much as she had done on Asgard. She slept. 

The bedchamber here was not the grand temple to Loki and sex that the one in the palace had been. Apart from the sheer size of the bed and the requisite fireplace it was entirely different - airy, with long open windows gauzy curtains and everything light coloured, except for the wooden posters of the bed that were formed from living, flowering trees, their limbs forming a natural canopy. The flowers were faintly luminous. 

Even in the grey state she had been in when they arrived Nora had gasped at it. Loki had smiled again, “Yes, even I think it’s beautiful. When I was very young I used to pretend to be ill so my mother would allow me to sleep here.”

“I can’t imagine you as a child,” she had said.

“I was quite adorable. Very large eyes.”

The next morning, or maybe afternoon, when Nora climbed out of bed she was surprised to find she felt rested. There was a note from Loki on the bedside table, and Diole had just walked in with a cup of coffee for her,

 

Off to save the multiverse from Sif and Volstagg’s statecraft.   
Back for dinner. You might enjoy the gardens. Or the library.   
L

 

Diole had seen her tentatively putting her hand up and then passing it through the doorway, then stepping through herself. “Are doors very different on Midgard?” She asked tartly.

“No. Asgard.”

She snorted, “Not surprised. Never been and never going. Those warmongers….” she muttered, “I can bring you food out there. He says you have to eat. For once he’s not wrong, either.”

Nora had spent the whole day outside. She didn’t move much from the lounging chair she had found under an arbor in the garden, other than to get up now and then and walk, seeing how far she could go before she hit another invisible wall.

She never found one.

That night Loki was mostly quiet, other than urging her to eat a bit more now and then, which she found herself able to do. He seemed to be waiting for her to say something. She couldn’t think of anything she wanted to say. When she went to sleep that night he went to bed with her, which was unusual for him. She woke the next morning to his being gone again, but to Diole with the coffee and another note. 

 

Multiverse still in danger. Volstagg referred to himself as an ‘envoy’ yesterday.   
It may be an unfixable situation.   
Diole is going to the market today, since she has to buy so much more to feed us perhaps you would consider helping her?   
L

 

Even though her muscles still ached from inaction and dullness, Nora had put on a pair of old running shoes, some sweats, and a Lord Huron t-shirt and followed Diole to the market, each of them carrying two baskets.  
The market stood on the edge of a small town that looked like a fully immersive Ren Faire experience from the year 3017. It had winding streets, quaint waddle and daub buildings, a charming station for a train that was sleek and gorgeous and had no tracks between them (“Ley line runners,” Diole told her, as if it should mean something to her), and a dainty landing pad for smaller spaceships.

And a very nice looking wooden tavern overlooking a lake. The Inn of the Hunter’s Moon. Diole pointed to it, “If you ever go there you should believe everything they say about your husband. And that boneheaded brother of his.”

The market was open air and smelled of vegetables and cheese and ale. After Diole had finished filling their baskets, and ordering some larger quantities to be delivered to the estate house later, they had sat on a wooden picnic bench - which in an example of universal design was exactly like one on earth except that the wood was naturally blue - having one of those ales. It was light but it still went straight to Nora’s head, making her speak a little.

“Everyone keeps looking at me.”

“They know you’re married to that one.”

“Yeah, but nobody looks scared, or disgusted, or pitying. Just … curious. Don’t they hate him here too?”

Diole snorted, “Of course. That war of his cost lives everywhere, but… here they remember he was our princess’s son. Her favorite, though she would never had said, and she loved the other one utterly, too. They want to see if you are like-” she waved her hand, “never mind.”

“What?” Nora was genuinely curious for the first time.

“Loki has broken more arranged engagements than most people have had kisses. Drove both of his parents crazy with it. What is the point of having a handsome, powerful, gifted second son if you can’t get an advantageous marriage out of him? Some of those girls were queens in their own right. With his … well, you know, he could have been a king in everything but name of any number of worlds, but no, not for him. So they are wondering why you?”

“Odin forced-”

“No. Odin might be a one-eyed donkey’s behind but there is no way he forced Loki to marry an unimportant girl from a backwards planet like Midgard.”

“Hey, Midgard is not backwards. We have Avengers and shit now.”

“But you are unimportant?”

“Duh.”

“Yeah, Odin might not be that smart, but he is smart enough not to throw away a wild card like Loki in a marriage that gets him nothing.”

“Then why is he making us stay married?”

Diole shrugged, “He’s very big on family values.”

That night over dinner Nora asked Loki what a ley line runner was. He stopped eating and stared at her for a few minutes, blinking, and then fell over himself explaining about how ley lines worked and how the trains used them to magically propel themselves around the surface and even across the waters of the planet without having to use fuel.

Every day was like that, waking with Loki gone and a note with a helpful suggestion of something she might like to do. A day spent slowly feeling herself unfurl a bit more. Dinner with Loki where she would ask him questions about Vanaheim, or maybe a bit about his mother, and then his answering. Occasionally it felt like they were conversing.

This was the first breakfast they had shared. 

“Isn’t the universe in peril today?” she asked.

“Undoubtedly, but I need a rest, so I arranged for Sif to have an emergency recall to Asgard and for Volstagg to accidentally eat some snails - he’s terribly allergic - it should give me a day or so of peace. And Diole is taking the day to visit friends. So you will not be alone.”

Nora’s head was clear enough these days for something to click, “You can go do what you are doing, I’m not going to try and kill myself.”

“Wha-”

“You go to bed with me every night, even when I know you aren’t tired, and from the moment I get up Diole is never more than a room away from me, until you get home. And then you are with me that whole time. Don’t worry about it. I don’t want to die. I don’t even -, I’m not as indifferent to having an accident or anything, either. I feel ok. Ok?”

She stood up and took her coffee and a pear that smelled like cinnamon, “I’m going to the garden.” Then, at the door, she turned back, “And you can stop pretending to give a damn. Go back to your regular schedule of nasty indifference and using me as a fuck toy. At least it’s honest.”

 

“When the God of Lies lies to someone they stay lied to,” Diole said, not looking up from where she was decorating a cake to take on her visit. “It must be frustrating to try and undo your own handiwork and find it failing. Still, she is much better than when you arrived. Mostly.”

Loki sat at the heavy wooden kitchen table, scarred by a thousand cuts and stained with endless meals prepared. He ran his hands over and over through his hair. “So you know?”

“Of course. I have known you all of your life. And a servant has to see more clearly than their masters or they don’t survive. I saw what a brat you were. And what a good boy sometimes. When she’s not looking, the way you look at her… I’ve never cared about fornication or romance, but that is a look.”

“I love her. I have loved her for years. Nora is my… she is my … lodestar. My cynosure.”

“I’m not going to ask you why she thinks you hate her, or whatever it is you have her convinced of. I am sure the answer is all foolishness and fear. Right now it would be bad for you to tell her the truth anyway. The poor thing is grieving. Or trying to. Has she wept?”

Loki thought. He thought and then shook his head, shocked, “No, she has not.” 

Nora cried. Unlike some she did not see it as weakness. But since all of this trauma no more than one tear here and one there...

“When people grieve, they must weep or they suffer even more. You should help her with that.”

“Yes, I can see that going quite well,” Loki said, ruminating on the various ways he might make Nora cry. 

Diole’s spotted and wrinkled hand covered his with a squeeze, “Don’t be simple minded. There are ways to make someone cry without hurting them. Or, ahem, hurting them. Go look at your grandfather’s books. Get some ideas.”

“I have never been gifted as a healer, you know this,” he answered. It had always been a quiet disappointment to Frigga that she had never been able to teach much more than the most basic healing spells and potions. For the first time he wondered if it was his Jotun blood that prevented his mastery of that art. 

He also wondered if there if there was Jotun magic…. 

“Not all healing is mystical in nature. Even my people sometimes use simpler methods, and you know how addicted elves are to our magic.”

Loki thought about it for a moment and went to read.

 

Late in the afternoon, Nora decided to make herself something to eat. Which, since she couldn’t figure out how to use the magic or the technology of the various appliances in the kitchen, and had never mastered cooking over an open fire, meant bread, leftover cold sausages, and cheese. She filled a big platter with them and went looking for Loki, feeling slightly bad about how breakfast had ended.

He had seemed almost hurt. And of all of the things for her to be angry with him about - not that she had that much energy back yet - his concern that she might do something bad to herself probably wasn’t one of them. It seemed just because he didn’t care about her, that didn’t mean he didn’t care about her.

Ah, she had given herself a headache.

The estate house had a number of reading rooms, each in a different style and with a different subject. She found him in one that she hadn’t been in yet. It was done in a less organic style than the rest of the house, with leather chairs and dark shelves. It reminded her a bit more of Asgard.

“Um, do you want some of this?” She asked, gesturing to the tray.

Loki was seated on the floor, a number of books open in front of him. From what little she could see a few of them seemed to be anatomical in nature. So that had to be bad.

He was clearly surprised. “Yes, but-”

“I was snippy with you today. Consider this an apology.”

In one graceful motion he was off the ground and had taken the food from her. He looked as if he wanted to say something and was forcing himself to stay silent. She could just imagine that snippy, superior tone he liked to take with her when he wanted to put her down a peg or five, saying, “It’s so adorable that you think you can have any effect on my feelings, pet.”

Instead, he just said, “Let’s go to our chamber to eat. I left a bottle of wine to breathe there earlier.”

Nora made herself a sandwich and had nearly finished it when she noticed Loki was neither eating nor drinking, just fiddling with his goblet and watching her. “What?” she said around a bite, spraying a few crumbs in the process. Luckily, she never felt very dignified around him anyway.

“It does me good to watch you eat.”

“Ok.” She finished the sandwich.

“Will you indulge me?” He asked, his voice very low and nearly hesitant.

It made her nervous. She took a sip of the wine. It was red, and warm, and even a taste of it was enough to make her aware of how strong it must be. “Um? In what way?”

He hesitated, and then stood up, “I would like to do something to you.”

Oh. Well she knew what that meant. He hadn’t touched her in days, no, a few weeks now. She knew it was only a matter of time. She guessed he had been getting with someone else when he was off on his little adventures. That thought made her feel things and she was enjoying not feeling much these days so she shoved it aside.

“I told you earlier, if you want-” she started to unbutton her blouse, while toeing off her sneakers.

“No!” He practically shouted, standing up, “I mean, yes, you will need to disrobe, but I have no plans to debauch you as part of what I wish to do.”

He was nervous.

Weird.

“But you want me to undress?”

“Yes. I would like you to undress and lay yourself out on the bed. Face down.”

“But you aren’t going to fuck me?”

He looked slightly pained.

“That is not my plan. Today.”

She finished undressing and laid down. 

“Do you not wish to know what I plan on doing?” He asked, his voice very dark and slightly husky.

“Does it matter?”

She heard a sigh, “I will return in a few moments.”

The bed was very comfortable, and that, combined with the warmth of the room, and the few small sips of wine meant she had started to drift off. Like most of her sleep lately, it wasn’t so much from being tired as simply not wanting to think. 

Nora didn’t know Loki had come back until she felt his hands on her. Even then, at first she wasn’t certain it wasn’t a dream. 

His touch was very light to begin with. Just the tips of his fingers pressing softly at the tops of her shoulder blades, then tracing downwards to where the small of her back began to raise up again. They were slick and very warm, almost hot, but pleasantly so. Oil, Nora thought dreamily. It smelled of roses and cinnamon.

“Are you-” she started to ask, her voice a little blurry to her own ear.

“Shhhh,” he placed a finger to her lips, “let me take care of you, princess.”

His hands moved over her back again, this time digging in a little more, but still just gliding over the surface in long motions. As if acclimating her to his touch. It felt good. His touch had always felt good. Those beautiful, elegant fingers had always been able to draw out out more pleasure and need from her than she would have thought she possessed. And she had thought she had possessed of a lot. In fact, it was when he had touched her and she hadn’t cared was when Nora had started to know that something was wrong with her. 

He started to work on the small of her back, kneading softly, but with increasing pressure as he eased her into relaxing.

Her back had been tighter than she knew. Or maybe it had just been tight for so long she had forgotten what it felt like to be loose. As he worked his way up, lightly circling the places above her kidneys, things started to happen to her body. 

First, she was turned on. Not flooded with it. It wasn’t the the panting, let him do anything to do her, desperate for relief arousal of before, but something slower and perhaps more insidious. A kind of desire that needed more than just sexual artistry to give her relief.

But after that, pain. Not that he was hurting her. Far from it. Loki’s hands did take her to the verge of pain, of discomfort, every touch just hard enough or constant enough to ensure she was loose and soft. It started as a feeling almost like prickly heat, as if needles were trying to poke their way out of her skin. Then it turned into something more like sandpaper, also on the inside. The extra coarse kind, that you could strip paint with.  
By the time he reached her shoulders, it felt like he had removed her skin. Everything that had been protecting her from the outside was gone.

Something dripped onto the pillow beside her and then rolled down it, touching her cheek.

“Did you spill some oil?” she asked. Her voice was rusty and hoarse.

“No,” Loki’s voice was very soft.

His thumb found an especially sore place. Where it felt like she had fallen upon a rock. Her whole body jerked when he pressed down, and she must have made a sound. “I am sorry, princess. I am not trying to cause you more pain.” His voice was still soft. Softer.

It happened again. Another trickle, this time blurring her eyes.

She knew what it was.

“No!” She sat up, pulling a pillow to cover her breasts. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt anything like modesty around Loki. At some point his seeing her, her being naked, had ceased to matter. She had had no feelings about it.

She had them now. 

And she hated it. 

“Stop,” she said, even though he had already stopped. “I need to-” she stood, still clutching the pillow, and started to go somewhere, anywhere, so she could calm and down and he wouldn’t see.

“Nora,” he didn’t try to touch her or stop her, “sit down, you are upset.”

“No. I’m not. I’m fine. It’s nothing,” she barely finished the last word before she sank to the ground and started to sob. Vast, horrible sobs that hurt as they wrenched out of her, that hurt to hear as she knew he would know how completely she had fallen apart.

Nora was horrified at the idea that he had finally found a way to get to her. He had broken her open, and now she was crouched at his feet, naked, and howling like a child, and all of the horror she had refused to feel, all of the shame and betrayal and just hurt she had felt and hidden were on display for his gloating pleasure.

Which just made her cry more.

 

Loki looked helplessly at Nora as she huddled on the floor, sobbing herself sick, rocking as she hugged a cushion to herself. Turning to hide herself from him.

“Oh, treasure,” he said, lifting her from the ground. He expected her to flail at him, but she couldn’t calm herself even enough for that. He could just hear her muttering ‘no’ over and over.

With as much care as he could muster he laid her on the bed where she immediately contracted into a ball. He sat on the floor next to the bed, and put his hand on her ankle and waited. His own muscles were locked. He needed to pick her back up, hold her on his lap, rock her and murmur to her and kiss her hair until she was well. He needed it. 

He could not have it.

It took her a long time to cry herself out. She would start to stop, and then, as if recalling another dreadful thing, she would begin again. Eventually, though, either her hormones or her memories gave out and the tears tapered to nothing.

As soon as she stopped, she rolled over and faced him. Their faces were very close. “Did that make you laugh? Was it funny for you?"

“No,” he went to the bathing chamber and returned with a damp cloth. Before she could object, or maybe she just lacked the energy, he wiped her face. Her poor eyes were a painful red. “I did not do this for my pleasure or amusement, no matter how deeply I crave the feel of your skin. I wanted to do something for you.”

“By making me cry? Because you can’t say you didn’t know that was going to happen.” Her voice was very rough. He handed her a cup of cool water that he had prepared earlier. She drank it breathlessly.  
“I did. You needed it.”

“That’s not for you to say. Or do.” 

“I think it is. If you will not see to yourself then as your husband I will see to you,” as much as he tried to keep his voice calm, he knew he probably sounded like a domineering ass. 

Which is why what Nora did next came as more than a bit of shock to him, “Then see to me,” she said, tossing the pillow away from her and rolling over onto her back.

Loki knew that arousal was another side effect of the massage he had given her, and he had known when she had started to feel it. Her skin had flushed so sweetly. Her breath panted a bit. It had taken no small amount of will on his part not to mount her like an animal at that point, after the ages, or weeks, it had been since he had been with her. 

Frankly, he was quite proud of himself for his control.

Which right now he cursed. He could take her now. The delicate and exposed state of her was the worst sort of provocation to him. If he took her now there would be nowhere she could hide from him, no truth in her that he could not see. 

But he had to have something.

 

Loki kissed her. 

His leaned over her like a prince in a fairy tale, his long hair sliding forward with an audible slither and they were alone together in the dark. His thin, clever mouth was tranquil and the kiss was lush. Every other kiss had given Nora was like the opening shot in a battle, a statement of his intent to have victory over her at all costs.

This kiss was an end unto itself.

Nora felt her eyes flutter closed as it went on and on. It was a peace offering. An apology. A prayer. A gesture of hope and fear. A benediction. A compact. A kiss.

When she touched his hair, he stopped and they stared at each other for the space of breath.

“You should … rest, Nora.” 

A blanket was pulled over her and he walked away. 

In the morning, there was another note :

 

“Dear Nora,  
Things have taken a turn for the worse and I will be away from you for a time. If you are in any need or, laughable though the thought may be, have need of me, let Diole know.   
\- L. “


	12. One heart is not connected to another through harmony alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nora makes another big, blonde friend. Loki still doesn't like it.

Two Weeks Later -

The Inn of the Hunter’s Moon was yet another beautiful, airy building made from dark, fragrant wood, with one large taproom and an equally large balcony perched over the river. The massive stone fireplace that was open to both spaces was filled with candles rather than a roaring fire due to the warmth of the spring late spring night.

Nora skirted around round tables occupied mostly by the beautiful Vanir, but also with a few of the other aliens that she had seen in the marketplace. Two very tall, austere looking females with Loki-black hair and curling horns, were playing some game involving painted tiles and dice, while flirting both jointly and separately with the pretty serving woman. A generally enormous, bald man with greyish skin covered in careful red incisions forming elegant scars was telling a very loud war story to a group of increasingly confused Vanir who looked to be from the same part of the planet as Hogun.

A group of musicians, more of a jam session than a band, were playing in the corner. The Vanaheim had a greater appreciation of the arts than Asgard did, so they were pretty good, even if they were twee as a faux-Irish pub in the suburbs.

At the bar, an obscenely gorgeous female with glowing green skin and deep auburn waves of hair and was dressed for intimidation was talking to a man who looked like nothing so much as a Midwestern farmer. One of those hot ones that only exist on Lifetime Television for Women.

It was the only place she had been since leaving Chicago where no one stared at her.

As she took a seat the green woman nodded and left.

The bartender was one of the only people she had seen on Vanaheim that showed any actual age, with his dark ivory skin slightly creased and his tired black eyes. “I don’t suppose you have Belt and Suspenders from Buckledown, do you?”

He gave her a slightly confused head shake.

“Yeah, I’ll take the least sweet beer you have then.”

He placed an honest to god foaming tankard of brown ale in front of her. Nora fished around in her pocket and pulled out some of the coins Loki had given her. “Is this enough?”

“Too much, princess.”

“Take it anyway. Do they tip here? I don’t care, I’m tipping.”

Nora took a sip. It was good. She took a swig. Still good. She was still enjoying it. She was enjoying a thing.

“Excuse me?”

Nora looked up, the space farmer had moved a few seats closer to her. He was big and blonde with a scruffy bit of a beard and the half genuine/half studied innocence of a certain kind of pick up artist.

“Yup?”

“The drink you asked for, is that an Asgardian thing? You’re that Asgardian princess that everyone’s been talking about, aren’t you? I mean, he called you princess.”

“No, I mean I’m Asgardian by marriage. And I’m married to a prince, so, yeah, I am that Asgardian princess. That still sounds wrong.”

“So shouldn’t you have guards or something? Do you?” He spun on his stool to look around. “Are they invisible?”

“I don’t have guards. Not here, anyway. And it’s from Chicago. The beer I ordered.”

“Chicago?” He seemed stunned.

“Yeah.”

“Chicago, Chicago? Blues Brother’s, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Channel Nine, awesome hot dogs, deep dish pizza, Muddy Waters, and Styx, Chicago?” he said, counting on his fingers and getting louder with each stereotype.

“That one. Thanks for not mentioned Al Capone or the Cubs, by the way.”

He was practically trembling with excitement, as he stood and pointed at her, “How do you know about Chicago?”

“That’s where I’m from.”

He sort of silently exploded, his hands up and tense, his mouth hanging open as he looked from side to side checking to see if someone was pranking him, his whole body vibrating. Finally, he burst out, “NO FUCKING WAY!”  
The man with the red scars looked over, “Quill?” He boomed across the room.

“Dude! She’s from earth, she’s from muthaFUCKing earth!” He yelled, spreading his arms wide and shaking his head, a gleeful grin splitting his handsome face. Then he quickly composed himself, and leaned loosely on the bar, putting out a hand, “Name’s Star Lord, from St. Charles, Missouri, but you can call me Peter.”

Of course he was. She should have seen he was a homeboy immediately. One of those guys you would have fun, messy sex with, where at you would end up bumping heads at least once, and he would use goofy voices when going down on you. And afterwards you would share a huge Tupperware container of cold spaghetti bolognese, passing back and forth the only clean fork in his kitchen, while heckling soft core porn on cable.

Nora felt herself wanting to smile just a tiny bit, taking his hand in a firm shake, “Nora … I guess it’s still Walsh, Chicago, Illinois, but you can call me ‘Your Highness’.”

Peter laughed and Nora smiled.

 

Loki watched from the darkened corner of the Inn where he sat sipping fjorlǫgr, a glamour making him appear to be just another idiot Vanir out for night of carousing. When he arrived back at Frigga’s estate, just in time to see his wife putting on a cloak and heading out into the night, at first he was concerned, but then after speaking to briefly with Diole he realized that her restlessness was a sign of healing.

While he was deeply pleased that Nora felt inspired to act on her own, there was no way he would let her wander through the town without supervision, and he trusted himself alone with her well being.

While recognizing the deep irony therein.

When he saw Nora enter the Inn he felt a sharp touch of nostalgia, and hesitated for a few moments before going in.

He had not been to the Hunter’s Moon in decades, maybe more than a century. When he and Thor had been little more than boys it was where they would go to drink, gamble, and wench when they were forced to visit their mother’s dully peaceful homeworld. It was full of memories of a time when the sight of his brother would not sicken him with envy. When their comradery had not yet been utterly poisoned by Odin’s clear preference for Thor over him.

But, even though it had always been a peaceful enough place when the Odinsson’s had not been there, Loki would not allow Nora to be alone in a place full of drink and likely armed creatures.

So now he sat, drinking and armed himself, feeling his insides curdle at the sight of her talking to another man. Smiling, if only slightly, at another man. Leaning towards him and talking and talking, as she had not talked in months. Certainly not to him. She was even making that beefy, golden, blue-eyed, dim-looking, loud-mouthed, frantically gesticulating, vulgarian laugh. She was being witty. Charming, intentionally or no.

All the while the buffoonish mortal was moving his chair ever closer to Loki’s wife. His princess. His treasure.

He considered casting a small spell to allow him to hear what they were saying.

But no. Loki trusted Nora. Nora’s sense of honor, her perfect integrity, would not allow her to misbehave with another man.

Even if it had been many, many weeks since they had made lo- had coitus.

Even if the man had a certain brawny, blonde handsomeness, and was from her home. And was not the person who had tormented her in one way or another for years.

Even if-

Nora shook her head at something the bleached twit said, and then clearly said, “No, like this.”

And started to sing for the other man.

No.

That could not be.

 

“No, no, it’s The Marvelettes, not Martha and the Vandellas. Man, your mother must really have known EVERY song,” Nora said, not quite laughing and taking a drink, “It’s the one where the chorus goes -

 

“What's this whole world comin' to /Things just ain't the same /  
Any time the hunter gets captured by the game…”

 

“Yes! That’s amazing. Did your aunt sing that?” Peter looked at her with big, starstruck eyes.

“No… but she has, had a friend who-”

Nora could feel Loki’s presence. Somehow she had become attuned enough to how the very air changed when he was around, and there it was, cold and once again malevolent, as he slowly stalked up behind her. Without turning, she spoke to her husband, “Oh, you’re back.”

Long hands dropped onto her shoulders and a cool breath licked her ear, “Why, pet, how could I stay away? I could smell you needing my special attentions all of the way across the planet,” he whispered, softly enough that Peter couldn’t hear, the feel of his voice running through her and making her shiver.

Damn. So that was starting to come back, too.

Still. “And you’re back to your normal self,” she sighed, trying to pretend to be unaffected by his voice and his touch and his chest pressing into her back. “Pete, this is Loki. Loki, this is Star Lord.”

Loki coughed, “I’m sorry, what?”

Peter suddenly went white. “Loki. As in your husband? And-”

“Star Lord,” Loki drawled, still behind her, “I wouldn’t suppose you have been in the area of the Domplaats space station in the last few months, have you?” His voice was a viper’s hiss.

Peter pretty much catapulted out of his seat, “Nora, it’s been awesome meeting you. Seriously. I can’t tell you how awesome, but I, oh man, I am so late. DRAX! We’re leaving! Loki, your Honorness, great to meet you,” he said, making a series of weird, stiff gestures with his finger, “Aand Nora. Um, bye.”

He was gone before the man with the red scars could even finish standing.

“Great. I was enjoying talking to him. He was from Missouri.”

Loki stayed behind her, one of his hands now gently stroking her hair. It took a conscious effort on Nora’s part not to lean back against his firmness. Not having life quite so shrouded in grey was lovely, but Loki was much easier to deal with through a haze.

That said, and she would bite out her tongue before admitting it, put it felt good to have him pet her like that.

His voice went from slightly singsong to insinuating, “How lovely for you,” he said. “I had no idea you liked that type. But that might explain your fondness for my cumbersome, golden brother.”

Fine. Nora could play hurtful asshole, too.

“If I was going to cheat on you it wouldn’t be with Peter. Or Thor. It would be with your dad. That eye-patch really does something for me,” she snarled at him.

He gave a sharp laugh and with his fingers in her hair pulled her head backwards, either not remembering or caring that he had hurt her the last time he had done something like that. This time he didn’t. It was just an intense feeling that jolted from the back of her head through the rest of her. Another feeling that she hadn’t had in awhile.

Off balance, only his other hand on the small of her back keeping her from falling, Nora tried to grab her tankard, hoping to toss the remains of her now warm ale in his face. “Ah ah ah, none of that, little princess,” he leered at her, looking oddly pleased.

Spinning her body on the stool, still gripping and pulling her hair, he bent down and took her over his shoulder and carried her that way past the bar to one of a series of small rooms, where he dropped her on a narrow bed full of pillows.

Before she could pull herself up, Loki followed her down, caging her body with his. Nora struggled, but he was too heavy, too strong. He had her legs trapped, his hands holding her wrists on either side of her head, and his straining erection pushing through his leather leggings, grinding against her denim covered clit.

“Damn it, let me go,” she struggled, but then stopped when she saw his face.

His eyes were so soft. A fierce smile showed his teeth, and he lowered his head, nuzzling her chin, her jaw, her neck, the tenderness of it in counterpoint to the crude way he was grinding on her at the same time.

“I missed you, treasure,” he crooned, nipping her delicately along the same path he had nuzzled before. “Say more insolent things to me. Show me disdain and witty dismissal. Make me have to resort to the most depraved, carnal acts to triumph over you.”

Nora moaned, he was crushing her, her chest was heaving, trying to catch her breath, “Kiss me,” she begged.

“No, you must kiss me,” he said, rolling them over on the narrow mattress, so now she was straddling him, one foot on the floor, the other trapped beneath his thigh.

For a few seconds she perched on his hips trying to understand his smile, his strange, gentle eyes, the way his mouth was slightly open and seemed to begging Nora to even just brush his lips with her. When she didn’t move, she expected him to yank her down. For a second Loki’s hands balled into fists and then released, as if trying to restrain himself.

Then he gave a rueful shake of his head and grimaced, sitting up and wrapping his arms around her, her chin on his shoulder, his head turned so his lips were quietly pressed to her cheek. And-

And that was it.

“Wha-,, what are you doing?” Nora asked, feeling nervous.

“Holding you,” he whispered against her skin.

“Bu-, wh-, huh?”

“You seem to have taken on my former speech impediment, dear girl. But in answer to the question you cannot quite get out, I am doing it because I wish to. Because I love the feel of you against me, and because I have to have something in these moments when I am trying to restrain myself or I will run mad in the streets, biting people and growling from under tables. Last time was a kiss. This time an embrace.”

“Why are you trying to restrain yourself? Why have you been?” She whispered, fast, desperate, and confused. “You already won. I let you get your way and then you quit. Why?”

It was an unusual position to be having a conversation in, but Loki showed no sign of letting her go.

“You giving in is not my winning, treasure. This bed is very lumpy for even sitting upon.”

There was displacement of space and a good wind, and abruptly they were a few inches in the air and then falling onto another, much larger bed, Nora landing on Loki’s chest. It again stunned her how strong he must be, since his breathing didn’t even hitch at the impact.

They were in a dark room that smelled like ivy and lilies Diole used to decorate the estate. “Where are we?”

“My old bedroom. When Thor and I were younger we would often get ourselves into… difficulties at the Harvest Moon. I set a teleportation spell on the rented beds so I could make a discrete departure, should need arise.”

“But not for your brother?”

“No. How ever would he learn from these situations if I was forever saving him?” His voice was so matter-of-fact, and it rumbled through his chest and into hers. It felt ridiculously good.

She snorted a bit, unwittingly, and Loki froze.

Everything felt … she felt everything that felt good, for the first time in so long.

She kissed him.

For the first time.

 

Loki crushed Nora against him. He could not stop himself. Nora kissed him.

 _Nora_ kissed him.

Nora _kissed_ him.

Nora kissed _him_.

“More,” he found himself begging.

She kissed him more.

His hands burrowed under the old, flannel blouse she wore that smelled of her warmth, tracing along her ribs and back. She was still so thin, but no longer frighteningly so. She kissed him and kept doing it, and he was like a gasping boy.

At least his hands remembered their business, even if his brain was lost to reason and was filled with only the quickening of Nora’s breath and his thoughts chanting, “mine mine mine.”

Her shirt was off. She wore nothing under it. He wanted to kiss her breasts. He could not force his mouth from hers, and she had wrapped her hands in his hair and was straddling him again. “Take yours off too,” she said into his mouth.

With no more control of himself than a green lad, Loki’s magic lashed out at Nora’s words, leaving them both naked. He was not even certain that had been his goal, for the second he felt her upon him every last bit of sanity fled before her touch.

She was so intent on kissing him, on not stopping, that she did not seem to notice what had happened, even though as soon as their flesh met she began to rock herself against his torso. She was just damp at first, but as she used his skin to pleasure herself, the muscles of his stomach to whet her need, her arousal grew until it rolled down his sides and pooled in the hollow of his hips.

He could even feel her exquisite cunt begin to flutter and pulse.

Grabbing Nora’s hips, and certainly failing in his desire to not bruise her, to not hurt her further, he lifted and slid her so the head of his cock lightly stroked and teased at her opening. She writhed and keened against him, sliding in her own wet, but he held her from taking him in.

She stopped kissing him, and looked at him in a daze. Loki’s brain started to return to some sort of order, but he knew it would not last. He snaked a hand between them and fondled her clit. She leaned her head on his chest and moaned, trying to ease herself even as he kept her from her release.

“Tell me you want this, princess. That this is for you. That you are still in this fight.”

Nora lifted her head and glared at him, her mouth slightly snarling, “Just fuck me, you ass.”

A carpet of rose petals strewn by virgins and sagas sung in his praise could not have given Loki more satisfaction than Nora’s most preferred insult.

He smiled again, the one he knew gave her pause and made her even wetter, and with a quick motion, flipped her over, slinging her legs over his elbows, and then as slowly as possible entered her. When she tried to arch up and take him more quickly he sat up on his knees so she was flailing to try for purchase.

It was a delightful torment to himself to take his time entering that hot, delicious place.

“Don’t struggle, darling girl. You said to fuck you, so I am giving you what you want. Now touch yourself,” he ground out the last word, his pace picking up.

Nora’s fingers teased the base of his cock while she ground the heel of her hand against herself.

Soon she was wild, and so was he. The distance between them meant that they were able to see every shade of need and want and insanity on each other, their eyes locked, and quickly any art was lost in pounding, and writhing, and coming over and over.

Loki fell upon her, burying his face in her sweat-drenched hair. “Did I-, are you hurt?”

Nora turned her head. Their noses brushing lightly. “No,” then she shifted and made a noise, “well, not in a bad way,” she added, nearly smiling.

 

Afterwards, rather than falling asleep Nora put on a robe and went out to the garden to sit at the small table where she drank coffee in the mornings. She was careful lowering herself into the chair, her body loose but aching. Loki followed.

“May I join you?” he asked, and by the light of the candles that were dotted here and there amongst the flowers and trees he could see her eyebrow rise. “I will leave you alone if you prefer.” He feinted as if to leave but didn’t. He cocked his head expectantly.

He feinted again, this time taking a few steps, and then came back, “Did you speak?”

Nora felt a smile wanting to form. It felt odd, like the muscles on her face were excavating an old memory. “No. I didn’t.”

“Ahhhhh….” he drawled out, turning on his heel to step away, “very well, so I will see you in bed then? In the morning?” He walked very slowly.

The smile won out, “Come back, take a seat.”

“If you insist.”

For a few moments there was only the sound of wind in the trees, nightbirds, and their breathing. After a few moments more, Loki nonchalantly draped his arm on the table, his hand palm up, while not looking at her.  
Nora looked at his graceful fingers, which probably still smelled of her, at the way he carefully didn’t look to her.

Should she take his hand? Why would she want to, might be a better question. There was no reason to believe his latest turn of behavior was anything other than a scheme, a strategy to ensure he could get some kind of response from her…

Thankfully, before she decided either way, Diole glided from the darkness, carrying a tray with a bottle of wine and two wooden goblets.

“If one is going to view the moon with their lover, they need wine,” she said, her her pretty but vinegar-y voice as quiet as the sound of the leaves. She quickly filled the glasses and disappeared back into the house before anyone could object to her view of things.

Nora took a drink. The wine was dark and smelled like currents and smoke and herbs that came from places she couldn’t name. Loki made a gratified sort of sound at the taste of it.

“Hey, I have a question. Diole isn’t Vanir, I know, but she’s not Aesir, either. She hates you guys. Those guys. She looks different from all of you, but I know she said your mom rescued her during a war or something?”  
“Diole was living in a city on one of Asgard’s colony planets, which my mother saved from burning by the Fire Giants. But she of Alfheim.”

Nora was taking a drink, which at that pronouncement went down the wrong way and then up to burst out of her nose, making her choke and cough around the burn from the wine.

Loki jumped up, taking the cup from her, “Are you well?” he said, visibly fretting.

“Wait,” Nora wheezed, trying to wipe her eyes, “wait. Are you saying that Diole is an Elf?”

“Yes, shall I-”

Something was happening deep inside Nora’s chest.

 

Loki hung helplessly about Nora, moving from side to side, trying to discern what was wrong.

Abruptly she reached out and grabbed his wrist, squeezing hard, and then looked at him, and then, wonderfully, it started.

At first it was just a few chuckles, “You mean she’s a… a she’s a House Elf?” she said, with an attempt at dignity.

And then Nora completely fell apart. Her hand dropped from him and she covered her mouth with both of them, her stomach heaved with effort, as wild laughter exploded from her. Every time she tried to speak or calm herself it got worse, until she started snorting and crying.

It took some time for her to get herself under control, “Oh, god, I need to go pee, I’ll be right back.”

After she was gone, Loki called out, “Diole?”

“Yes, your highness,” the old retainer said, at his side immediately.

Loki looked at her seriously for a moment, and then, with a whoop, picked her up, spinning her in a circle, the way he and Thor used to do when they were boys and were already bigger than she was.

“Let me down, Loki!” She scolded him as she used to then.

He did, laughing and kissing her on the cheek, “Thank you, Diole, thank you a thousand times.”

“For what, rascal-kin?”

“All of the things I have never thanked you for.”

She sniffed, “Then that would be more than a thousand then,” she said tartly.


	13. Sometimes Things Have to Get Worse Before they Get Better.  No, Sorry, Make That Things Just Have to Get Worse When Loki is Involved

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki Uses His Charm, Nora Uses Her Fists

 

“We are not done here!”  Loki pointed at Nora, and then called over his shoulder to where Sif waited outside of their rooms, “I am coming!”  

With a neat heel turn he reached for the door and then spoke again to Nora without looking at her, eyes closed, shoulders dropping, “I will… I will finish as quickly as I may, and then we can … we will speak.  I am sorry for everything, but I am your husband.  You are my wife.  You always shall be.”

She just stood as she had been, tense, ready for anything.

After he left she stayed that way for a few minutes.  Then she cocked her head, narrowing her eyes, she whipped open the door and screamed in the direction he had gone.

“LIKE FUCKING HELL!”  

Then, kicking off her impractical slippers, Nora lifted her skirts and ran in the opposite direction like the devil was chasing after her.

 

Four Days Earlier -

Nora woke to kisses.  

For a few dreamy seconds she didn’t know what was going on, just that something wonderful was happening to her shoulders and up and down her spine.  She buried her face in the pillow and willed it to go on with a small sound of pleasure.

Loki’s hair trailed over her skin and then his laugh ran down her back and pooled between her legs.

Then she started, turning over and knocking him off while pulling the blankets to cover her chest.  She thought about the last time he had screwed around with her back and the last time she had woken to him being … no.  She was NOT going through either thing again.  

“Are you suddenly ticklish, princess?”  Loki was sprawled across the end of the bed.  The arm his head lay upon was problematic.  She wanted to bite it.  

Hard enough to leave a mark.

She found herself wanting all sorts of things from him.  Some of them in bed, some of them not.  

Even if she was feeling better wanting things from Loki was a bad idea.  Dangerous.  Last night notwithstanding, she didn’t trust him.   This current mood of teasing, seduction, even a kind of courtship could disappear and turn back into cruelty and coercion with no warning.  Isn’t that how abusers worked?

When she didn’t answer, he dropped to his belly and crawled up the long bed, then up her body, staring into her eyes the whole time, like a snake hypnotizing a mouse.

Nora didn’t like to think of herself as a mouse.  A vole maybe, but not a mouse.

Still, she was hypnotized, and for a whiny, childish moment all she could think was how unfair this all was.  What possible pleasure could he get in defeating someone so clearly overmatched in whatever this was between them?  

Like the first time she had seen him after her near death fucking in the bathing chamber, Loki now stared down at her, hands on either side of his head, and they were both naked again.  Of course this time he wasn’t in her.

And there was no longer that blankly amused look on his face.

She didn’t know if she could describe what the look on his face was now.

“Roll back over,” he said, lifting himself up so he arched over her body.   His voice was calm, but very firm.

She hesitated, having a feeling she knew just where this was going.

“Now.”  

“What if I don’t?”  She asked.

“Then we eat breakfast,” the corner of his mouth lifted.  “But I know you.  I know what you want, what you crave, what you do not.  Everything that makes your body purr and stretch and roar.” He lowered himself like he was doing push-ups so his mouth hovered over the hollow of her throat, “I promise, you want this.”

He lapped the sweat that had pooled there, brought on by too many blankets and too much Loki.

Oh, what the hell?  Nora thought.  

“Well, lift up if you want me to roll over, then.”  

His soft ratcheting laugh caressed her skin, and instead of waiting he snagged her hip through the blankets and flipped her over, covering her with his body.

“If you don’t want to look at my face you could just- ah….”  That felt wonderful.  Just the way his fingers trailed down her sides, the way his mouth worked on her neck.

“I adore your face.  The disapproving, flat line of your mouth when I have committed an enormity makes me want to lick your lips open.  The dark scowl of your eyes when I have disappointed you makes me want to bite you somewhere shocking so they will go wide and girlish.  The pale, nearly invisible freckles on your left cheek that I want to nuzzle and kiss.”

Nora buried her face in the pillow, not really feeling what he was doing to her any longer, “Stop.”

She could feel like lift his head, the tips of his hair lightly tracing her skin, “Are you well?”

“Just stop.  I want breakfast.”

He paused for just long enough to make her tense up, and then he was off of her body, as if feeling her muscles locking up concerned him, “I will see to it.  Would you like to eat here?”

“Ok.”  She didn’t look at him.

There was quiet for a few breaths, and then she heard him leave.

 

Loki was annoyed to see Diole waiting at the foot of the stairs, a breakfast tray in hand.  She shook her head at him, “Don’t scowl at me, prince, just because suddenly your wife isn’t in love with you and happy all of the time.  She’s not a toy, or any other simple thing.  And you made a huge mess of things did you not?”

“You could be replaced, you know.  There are any number of disapproving old women who would be happy to have as easy of a life as you do here.”

“None of them are foolishly sentimental enough to put up with your nonsense.  Take this up there, eat with her, try not to drool all over the poor girl, and maybe consider telling the truth to her. “

He snorted.  

What good had the truth ever done him?

Granted, he had never tried it with Nora…

No. 

When he returned to their room, Nora had put on jeans and a shirt and sweater as well as her boots.  Her hair was braided and pulled up.  Consciously or not she was armoring herself against him.  

Loki was surprised at how much it hurt even knowing that he had earned this punishment.

“I’m thinking of walking back into town.  I didn’t see much of it last night,” she said, taking a seat and pouring herself a huge amount of coffee.  

“I see.”  Loki served himself, forcing his hands to not shake.  Would she be seeking out that thick-built, blonde locked MIdgardian again?  

“Would you like to go with me?  Not like last time, following me like a creeper, but actually going with me?  Show me around?”  She spoke very softly, as if whispering so she wouldn’t hear the words herself.

Loki nodded, and then realised she was staring at her toasted bread and cheese, so managed to croak out, “Yes.”

 

It was a beautiful day, again.  The weather on Vanaheim was as relentlessly beautiful as the weather on Asgard had been relentlessly perfect.  Or at least what Nora had seen of it from the windows in Loki’s chambers.  Both were deeply exhausting and she found herself longing for shitty, cold drizzle, or that kind of endlessly overcast quality where the sky looked solid enough to crush the life out of the ground.

Or too much heat.

Or too much cold.

Anything to break of the monotony of everything being just so.

Loki helped, much as Nora hated to admit it.  As they walked through the village he pointed out sites of his and Thor’s childhood misadventures.  Almost all of which ended with Thor being in terrible trouble, at least one other child crying, and Loki back at his mother’s home, innocently reading a book, a cool, half-finished drink at his elbow.

He told her what the various fruits and herbs in the marketplace were for, be they culinary, magical, or aphrodisiacal.  

Apparently the Vanir were seriously into turning people on.  

Every time Loki put one of those items into the basket that Diole had insisted they take Nora would quietly put it back, making him laugh.  It turned into a game that the entire market played, where people would sneak him tinctures smelling of vanilla, handfuls of spruce, tiny bags of peppercorns and green rose petals, sprigs of rosemary and other herbs that made her nose itch, apples with runes carved into their pink skins, musky oils that smelled a little too good, even chocolates formed in obscene shapes.

“So they sell tacky bachelorette party favors here, too?”  She asked, waving a disturbingly large, candy penis wrapped in transparent silk in his face.

“What has turned into a joke on Midgard once had a very real magical application,” he sniffed at her, taking the offending confection from her hands.  “I wonder that these are so small….  Here,” he motioned to the woman selling them, “do you have any full-size genitalia, or only these dainty phalluses?”

The woman raised an eyebrow, “These are the largest we have, your grace.  Perhaps if you would consent to act as model….?  I have heard the rumors.”

Which set Nora laughing.  Which made Loki smile at her. 

What a smile!

She stopped, feeling weirdly shy.  She was about to say something that was lost forever when Sif, flanked by a number of einherjar marched into the marketplace, clearly looking for them.

“Ah, I guess I must go back to work…” Loki said, sounding nearly wistful.  Then he turned to Nora, “Would you care to see the capitol?”

 

Which was how Nora ended up wearing something that was sort of like a ballgown - with just a little bit of armor and the coronet that Loki had repaired - standing with Loki in what was basically a deistic receiving line, getting ready to celebrate the end of whatever negotiations he had just completed.  

She fiddled with the strands of beads that he had given her that morning and had specially requested she wear tonight and frankly stared at everything.  

Various … beings… dressed in everything from a loincloth and some appliqued jewels to full plate and plumed helmets came to salute her husband, the former most wanted poster boy, now apparently something of hero for ending a war that had been going on for generations.

She looked at him and wondered why.  Why if he could be  _ this  _ he had instead been  _ that _ .  No one was the perverse, were they?  She looked at Loki again.  

In his case it was possible.

It was lucky that no one expected Nora to speak much, since other than Loki’s quick primer on the major players and a few culture faux pas that she should avoid she didn’t have any idea what was going on.  Or why he even wanted her here, unless it was just so she could be impressed by him.  That was more than possible, too.

These few days they had been at the capitol of Vanaheim had been like a vacation inside of a vacation.  Loki would spend hours in closed doors while Nora explored the city, which looked like what would happen if someone rebooted The Lord of the Rings as a science fiction series.  At one point she was pretty sure she saw whatshisname, Missouri Lord and his green skinned friend hanging around one of the ships when she toured the space port.

She gave him a little wave and he started to wave back but stopped himself and pretended not to see her.

Volstagg, who it had been decided was not needed for the rest of the negotiations, was her escort.  She rather liked the Viking Biker, who had a soft spot for children and food.  

He made it his personal mission to fatten her up.  “It’s not healthy for females to be skinny, princess.  Even one married to a stick figure, as you are.”  

She would fall into a food coma nap and wake up to Loki returned and coiled himself about her to sleep as well.  He made no attempt to seduce her, and she was honest enough with herself to be ambivalent about his restraint.

“Nora,” he now whispered to her, the ridiculously beautiful and elegant woman in front of her having clearly been trying to get her attention.  

“Sorry.  I was making my grocery list.”

The woman frowned slightly, making her immaculate features even more charming.  She was taller than Nora, even a bit above Asgardian-tall, with golden hair and everything else.  “Lady Kismet, may I introduce Princess Nora of Midgard,” he said with a slight bow.

“How do you do?” Nora said, putting out her hand.

The woman took it with all of the grace of a sorority girl taking a non-diet, generic soft drink from her father’s new wife.  Her slender fingers were surprisingly strong, but even after all of this time Nora’s near death apple experience gave her a strength surge now and then and she was very happy to get one now.

As they gritted pleasant smiles at each other, Lady Kismet spoke with just a touch of a gasp that on her was sexy and on anyone else would sound like had just drunk too much water too quickly, “I was just enquiring as to what you are the goddess of?  Seeing as Prince Loki has been notorious for his … finickiness in choosing a consort I can only assume that he would require goddess to match his godliness.”

She smiled resplendently.  

Nora managed to extricate her hand with some grace, and was about to explain, when Loki gently put an arm around her shoulder and tenderly kissed her temple, whispering, “Don’t let her fluster you, she’s one of my rejects.”

_ That _ was one of the ones that wasn’t good enough? 

And she wasn’t flustered.  She was irritated.

“To be my wife, my treasured one is clearly the Goddess of Clemency and Fortitude,” Loki said in a crisp, amused voice.  

At the same time Nora said, “I’m not a goddess.”

Kismet chose to ignore Loki, “So it’s a love match.  How quaint!  But then I have heard Midgard is very quaint indeed.”

Nora crossed her arms, “Come to Chicago with me sometime, I’ll take you to some very quaint spots on the West Side.  Wear all of your jewelry.”

“You know what a romantic I am, Kis, so of course it is a love match, on my side at least.” Loki said with a snarky laugh.  

Nora snorted and looked at him, and-

For just a second there was something in his expression.  Only she could see it.  He was wholly unguarded for just a moment.  And she saw it was true.

He met her eyes, his narrowing, and then growing wide, knowing that he had been caught out.

What.  The.  Actual.  Fuck?

“Pardon me, your goldenship, but I have to take my husband away for a moment.  I find myself so  _ overwhelmed  _ with love.”

 

Loki could not think of a lie.  

As Nora bustled ahead of him, his hand gripped tightly in her’s, clearly headed towards the anteroom where they had waited before entering the Hall of Spring, he tried to think of a story.  To spin a deception.  To even find a fight to pick to distract her.

He could not.  At this most crucial moment his godly gifts failed him and he knew that she would know.  That she already knew.  His truth had been upon him and Nora had seen.

Planning to distract her with a fight before she could speak, Loki opened his mouth as soon as they entered the empty room and found he could not even think of a fight to start.  His mind had not merely failed him, it was actively betraying him.

“Tell me why you married me,” Nora’s voice was calm, but he could see the tension in her shoulders, where her hands squeezed her skirt, her jaw.

“I married you because being Eddie was so lonely, which was no different than being myself these last years, except that when I was with you it was less so.  I married you because you are a bright light in a dark place, a perfect jewel in a pile of rubbish and filth, because when you laugh you snort like a vulgarian, and when you kiss everything stops rushing and roaring and I am sane.  I married you because I love you.”

“Don’t lie to me!”  She shouted, and then took a step towards him, holding out a hand that could either bring him closer or push him away, “Please.  I deserve that much.”

He nodded slowly, “Yes.  I did lie.  Your snort is not vulgar, it is charming.  Everything else was true.  I love you, I married you for love, and then I treated you like you were nothing to me for fear.”

“Fear of what?” She gasped, her mouth slightly open, her eyes wide and wet.  He knew that expression from the inside.  He had worn it himself when he had begged Odin to tell him the truth of his birth.  It sudden occurred to him, looking at her sweet face, that he really was the AllFather’s son. 

“Everything.  Odin is already using you against me, and he only suspects how I feel.  Were he to know the truth…. Fear of my endless list of enemies knowing.  The things that they would do to you!  Fear of you.  Of what you would do to me.  You already hated me, and I married you and lied to you for years about who I am, so knowing that I am little better than a slave to my feelings for you, I feared-”

That was when she punched him.

 

Nora had ever hit anyone before.  Not really.  She had friends in her high school that would get into a fight over anything - lipstick colour, bands, boys - but she had never been one of them.  But she did have two brothers.  And a strength surge that was still running through her body.

It was fortunate that Loki knew how to take a punch, rolling with it and offering his jaw in place of his mouth, but he still fell backwards, caught off guard by the force of it.  Nora’s hand screamed in pain, but she knew she hadn’t broken it so she didn’t care.

“Slave!  You piece of shit!  You fucking bastard!  Get up!  Get the fuck up and fight me!”  She started to kick at him, but he easily evaded her and found his feet.  Before she could swing again she felt herself lifted by invisible hands, careful but firm and pushed to the wall where she was lifted so she was at eye level to him.

Wiping his mouth, Loki took three long steps to her, putting one hand on her throat where his thumb softly stroked her pounding pulse.  He leaned on the other and put his face close to her’s.  “I will not fight you.  It would be like an human infant fighting a tiger.  I could kill you without intent and I am done with hurting you.”

“Oh, well that’s nice for me, isn’t it?  Let me down!”

“No.  I do not trust you not to do something regrettable.  Deserved,” he conceded, sounding genuinely contrite, which just made her hate him more.  She hated him beyond her ability to understand it.  “I deserve you ire, but this is not the time or place.”

“You don’t get to run my life, you …. you…  goddamn monster!”  She was too furious to think of anything clever to call him.

Loki let her go, standing back, a look of dark rage on his face that might have scared her another time.  The hands were abruptly gone and she dropped the half a foot, barely catching herself.  

“Monster I may be, but your husband as well.  You are mine and I am yours, treasure.”

“Like hell!  There is no way our marriage is legal anywhere.  Even on fucking Asgard.”

The rage that had been in his face before was nothing compared to what it was now, and even in her righteous rage Nora took a step back, “NO!  You are mine.  Remember that and try not to be too foolish right now.”

He took a step towards her and there was a knock at the door.  Sif’s voice was surprisingly tentative, as if she had heard them, “Your Grace, the ceremony-”

“We are not done here!”  Loki pointed at Nora, and then called over his shoulder to where Sif waited outside of their rooms, “I am coming!”  

With a neat heel turn he reached for the door and then spoke again to Nora without looking at her, eyes closed, shoulders dropping, “I will… I will finish as quickly as I may, and then we can … we will speak.  I am sorry for everything, but I am your husband.  You are my wife.  You always shall be.”

She just stood as she had been, tense, ready for anything.

After he left she stayed that way for a few minutes.  Then she cocked her head, narrowing her eyes, she whipped open the door and screamed in the direction he had gone.

“LIKE FUCKING HELL!”  

Then, kicking off her impractical slippers, Nora lifted her skirts and ran in the opposite direction like the devil was chasing after her.

 

They were almost ready to leave.  Rocket and Drax were securing the last of the ‘cargo’ and Gamora was finishing the preflight while Peter finished bribing the port authority creature.  It was covered in scales, had a ridge of protruding bone down its back and tail, and was happy to look the other way from a little unorthodox behavior for a very reasonable price.

They had just shaken hands - well hand and tentacle - when that tall brunette he had talked to in that cool bar in   Móðirbæjarins ran up to them and stopped, gasping and holding her side.  She was wearing a really fancy prom dress and no shoes.

The P.A. creature gave her a look that worried Peter, scuttering off.  

That wasn’t a judgemental thing, Peter thought, it really does scutter.

She put up a finger for him to wait when he started to speak, “Hang on.  How’d you like to help a sister out?”  She then reached up and took off a small tiara-thing, and then the half-dozen necklaces of different stones she was wearing.  “This should make it worth your while.”

Peter took the jewelry, hefting it.  Yondu had always liked dealing with gems.  They were small and they didn’t complain, so he had a pretty good idea what they were worth.  

Conservatively more than his whole ship, his crew (including the various prices on their heads), the cargo, and everything else he had ever owned his whole life.

“Where do you want to go?”  He asked.

“Away.”

“You’re in luck.  That’s just where I’m headed.”

  
  
  
  



	14. Why Do We Only Chase the Ones That Run?  Because It Would Be Weird to Chase Someone Who Was Standing Still.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nora makes new friends. Loki doesn't.

 

There was a sound.

Sif was speaking to him, as was Volstagg.  But neither of them was producing it.  Loki knew all of the tiresome tones of their dull voices.  Especially when they were shouting their typical mindless drivel at him.

For a moment he thought it might have been coming from where Sif was clawing at his shoulder, or where Volstagg had wrapped his arms about Loki’s waist and was pulling at him.  It could have been the groaning of the leather ripping and the metal plates that were part of his ceremonial costume separating.  But no, it was not.

Nor was it coming from himself.  When in the grips of torture or madness he had been known to produce sounds that were terrible, nearly inorganic, as if his body was trying to turn itself into something impervious to the depredations of flesh and spirit.

But this was not one of those noises, either.  Though it could have been.  He felt decidedly in need of less of his heart at the moment, as it was currently in jagged fragments that snarled his lungs, clogged his throat, and cut him from the inside out.  

Finally, some of Sif’s words made it through, “If you kill him he can’t tell you what he saw!”

Ah.

That was the noise.  It was the sound of the guard whose jaw he held whining, or trying to, around the tongue that Loki had turned to ice in his mouth, the sound of bones contracting under the cold of his touch.  The crisping of his skin burning black with frost.

It was fortunate the countless generations of einherjar had been bred for strength and even more so for heartiness or the man would be dead already.

As it was, the look in his eyes led Loki to believe that he might prefer that state of not-being.

“He failed in his duty to protect his princess, allowing a woman with no military training to elude him by the mere expedient of running.  His sentence on Asgard would be death.”

“Princess Nora wouldn’t want that,” Volstagg gasped out, falling away, the cold of Jotunn skin even when covered in leather was too much for the oaf.

“She has lost any right to my considerations,” Loki said, dropping the guard at any rate.  Sif was correct, he needed what little information he might glean from the fool.  He crouched over the broken man, smiling, “Which way?”

A trembling, weak arm was raised, pointing towards the sign that directed visitors to the spaceport.  

Now there was another sound.

This one did come from Loki.

 

“QUILLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!”  

Peter had just gotten Nora, the freaking princess, settled in his room so she could change into something less fancy than the ballgown she was wearing when he heard Gamora shouting for him.  Bellowing, actually.  Like he had done something wrong. 

“Here,” he said, thrusting the princess a stack of folded clothing, all of it from Earth and most of it clean, “take your time.  Be comfortable.  Bye.”

He found Gamora storming down the hall, clutching the jewelry that Nora had paid him for taking her from Vanaheim.  Rocket was following her, with Groot clutching onto his shoulder.  The raccoon was jumping and trying to snatch the valuables back from her.  “Gamora, I told you.  I need those,” he grumped.  “Quill gave them to me.  And Groot.”

The tiny plant-baby nodded.

“No I didn’t!”  Peter said.  “I locked them in one of the storage units.  Actually.  Until we get somewhere we can sell them and divvy it up.  Actually.”

“Which would be nowhere!”  Gamora yelled, shaking the necklaces and the crown-thing in his face.  “Do you know what these are?  Do you know who these belong to and how much trouble we are going to be in?”

“They belong to us.  Now.  They were a payment for transport.  I told you that we were helping out a woman from my homeworld and she was paying us for it,” he said, spreading his hands in what he hoped was a placating gesture, but he thought might just make him look confused.

“These!” Another shake of the jewelry now flung the end of one of the necklaces into Peter’s nose where a facet of one of the stones caught his nostril.  He clutched at it, bending over and checking for blood, none of which stopped Gamora’s rant, “These are not from EARTH!  They are from ASGARD!  From the Royal Family of ASGARD!

“If some woman from Earth has somehow managed to steal these we need to turn her and them over to their authorities that are back on Vanaheim right away.”  Something about that thought made Gamora’s shoulders slump a bit and her voice go quiet, “You and Drax should, at any rate.  Prince L-loki and I have a… it would be bad for him to meet with me again.  Perhaps very bad.”

“I know how you feel,” came a quiet voice from the door to Peter’s quarters.  Nora was standing there, wearing a pair of Louisiana University Lions sweatpants that were hilariously too large for her, black socks, and a lemon colored A-Ha t-shirt.  “If it makes you more comfortable I didn’t steal those.  Loki gave them to me.”

Gamora stared at the handful of priceless jewels and then at Nora, and then back again, her mouth open.

“Ok, I know I’m not royalty material, but that’s kind of insulting,” the princess muttered. 

“Yeah, Gamora.  Kind of insulting,” Peter said, slinging an arm around his home-girl’s shoulder.  

When she flinched he tried not to take it personally.

“I- I mean no insult, your highness,” Nora make a ‘tuh’ noise and rolled her eyes, “I knew there was a rumour that Lok-ki had married, but no one seemed to know anything about his wife.  It’s simply, even if you -, even if you are estranged from him I cannot believe you would do something like give up your bridal necklaces.  And even if you were to give those up, the tiara is- it’s a relic of the former queen, Frigga.  It’s one of the treasures of the Royal House.”

“What?”  Nora walked over to her and took the crown-thingy, “I just thought…  Loki would always insist on me wearing this thing, so I just thought it was an ownership thing.  You know, ‘Don’t touch, property of Loki,’ like that.”  Her voice was thoughtful, if snarky.

“It was a gift from the AllFather when he was a still a prince to Princess Frigga, given when she first arrived on Asgard.  Until then, no one who married into the royal family were considered to be a part of it, they were just consorts.  If he… if Loki,” Gamora seemed to fall over his name every time she tried to say it, “gave this to you he was trying to ensure that everyone would treat you with deference.  With the gravest respect.”

Nora held the coronet up, looking at it again, “Everyone but him,” she turned to look at Peter. “I wouldn’t have taken it if I knew.  Is the rest of it enough?”

“More than enough,” he smiled at her, and tried not to take it personally that she didn’t smile back.

Rocket made a noise of physical pain.  

Gamora looked a little sick.

 

When the Asgardians arrived at the spaceport there was a very worried looking official awaiting them, who was somehow sweating in spite of his being a lizard and the temperature having dropped suddenly in that region of Vanaheim.  

Great clouds of steam piped from the shoulders of Loki’s cloak, and his eyes glowed a malevolent red in his deeply blue face.

“Ya- yer- yu- Your Heightness,” it finally managed to gasp out, “I am, I was, I um, - THIS!”  

The unfortunate creature thrust a cardboard box, not unlike the style in which pizza was delivered on Midgard, into Sif’s hands, and then took off running.  

(If he had not been numbed to anything but his fury and the monstrous pain in his chest, Loki might have been surprised to notice that it actually  _ was _ a pizza box, although one that was so free of oil stains and the rancid odor of old mozzarella that it had apparently never been used.   Indeed, it was a relic of sorts from a long-defunct pizzeria chain in central Missouri called, predictably, Tony’s.)

Sif opened the box, and then turned it towards him.  Inside, carefully cushioned in part of the skirt from Nora’s gown, was his mother’s coronet.  When he lifted it, he found a note scrawled on the bottom of the box.

 

“Sorry.  I didn’t know.  

Leave me alone.

N.”

 

Loki grabbed the piece of cloth, which froze and then crackled in his hand.  “No.”  He turned to Sif, “Find out everything about the ship she is on.”

She hesitated a moment, but then nodded with a bow, “Of course.  The princess must be found.”

 

Over the next several days Nora tried to keep busy around the ship, but it turned out there wasn’t much for her to do.  Everyone had jobs, none of which she understood.  There were a few books she found in Peter’s room, paperbacks from home - old celebrity bios, porn, and hardboiled mysteries mostly - but she found herself unable to concentrate on any of them for very long.  

She killed time writing out song lyrics for Quill, learning card games from Rocket, and trying not to think about Loki.

Especially trying not to think about his voice, his face, when he said, “ _ I married you because you are a bright light in a dark place, a perfect jewel in a pile of rubbish and filth, because when you laugh you snort like a vulgarian, and when you kiss everything stops rushing and roaring and I am sane.  I married you because I love you. _ ”

Because it made her want to scream.  For a long list of reasons.  At one point she even wrote them down so she wouldn’t forget any.  She even repeated them aloud to herself after she finished the list, pretending to read them to Loki himself, and then balling it up and stuffing it down his imaginary throat.

Somehow she had gone through the first four stages of grieving, and then after depression had gone back to anger rather than moving on to acceptance.  Breathing the very air around her … husband seemed to have destroyed Nora’s ability to accept anything except now active and competing fantasies of never seeing him again, or of seeing him suffer.

But even though she wasn’t sure what to do with herself most of the time, she liked being with the self-titled Guardians of the Galaxy.  Talking to Drax was a challenge, but Nora found she loved his literal-mindedness.  It was a comfort and a relief after Loki’s endless lies and double-talk.  Peter made her feel a little less homesick for the first time since everything had started.  Rocket reminded her of some of the shadier types that hung around some of the venues her Aunt Claire had sung at, and Groot was just fucking adorable.

Sadly, the two female members of the crew weren’t quite so friendly.  

Mantis wasn’t so much unfriendly as much as she seemed spooked.  She had shyly come forward to be introduced, smiling sweetly, but when Nora shook her hand the girl jerked away as if she had been given an electrical shock. 

Later, when Nora had been reading in the common room and learning far more than she ever wanted about Shaun Cassidy, she found Mantis perched next to her on the arm of the couch.

“I apologize if I have been rude, princess,” Nora couldn’t get any of them but Quill to stop calling her that.  At least when Rocket said it he was being a smart-ass.  “I can sometimes be overwhelmed by the emotions I sense.”

“Sorry about that.  I’ve had a rough couple of months.”

“Oh no!  Your emotions are very strong, it is true, but it is your husband’s emotions that I found unbearable.  The empathic link between a Jotun and its mate can be like a raw nerve if it isn’t tended to properly.”

She looked at Nora as if what she had just said made sense.

“Um, sure.  That’s good to know, but what’s a Jot-” 

The girl just turned a sickly shade of pale, her antennae waving in distress.

“Very raw,” she whispered, scurrying away.

Gamora made no effort to pretend she was doing anything other than avoiding Nora, but once or twice she did catch her still trying to persuade Quill that they should find a way to send her back to Vanaheim.  Right away.  

Finally, Nora had enough of it, and when she saw Gamora deliberately heel turn back the way she came when they ran into each other in a hallway she chased after the other woman.

“Green’s my favorite color, you know,” she said, gasping for breath as she caught up and then kept pace with Gamora’s fast steps.  “You would think that after Loki I would hate it, but I don’t.  Which brings up a question, actually.”

“Why is my skin green?” Gamora asked tensely, clearly expecting some kind of space racism on Nora’s part.  “My mother was from-”

“Nope.  Why do you stutter every time you say Loki’s name?  And flinch when someone else says it?”

“I- I don’t.”

Gamora walked faster.

“Loki. Loki. Loki.”  Nora called out.

Flinch.  Flinch.  Flinch.

Knowing it was a bad idea, because Quill had assured Nora that Gamora was one of the “consummate bad-asses in the universe,” she grabbed the other woman’s arm.  “What is it?  Were you two lovers?  I get it because you are both totally beautiful and I am seriously not je-”

“No!”  Gamora shouted, as if slightly horrified by the idea.  

Nora was very surprised to find herself offended on her husband (no, she needed to stop thinking that way), on Loki’s behalf.  He may have been an unconscionable ass, but he was a gorgeous unconscionable ass, the MOST gorgeous unconscionable ass, as well as a pleasure artist of the first caliber.  

“I mean, no, that is not my problem.  Your husband is a very attractive man, but no matter what  _ my _ looks I can assure you that I am amongst the last creatures he would ever consider bedding.”

“Why?”  Nora crossed her arms.  She wasn’t into girls, but Gamora was ridiculously hot.

“Because,” Gamora dropped her head in shame, “I am one of Thanos’s daughters, and I was there when it was done.”

“What’s a Thanos?”

Gamora’s mouth opened and closed a few times.  Like a very attractive fish.

“The Mad Titan?”  She said, incredulously.

“So?” Nora was really tired of everyone using space lingo and acting like she was an idiot for not knowing it.  She had only been off of earth, hell, out of Chicago, for a few months and she had spent most of that time being insulted, toyed with, and having screaming, crying orgasms, so there hadn’t been any time to learn much about her new surroundings.

Gamora put her hand to her mouth, and then frowned.  “You have the right to know.  Come with me.”

 

In her rooms, spartan and martial, Gamora had Nora sit and pulled out what looked like a book, but was actually some sort of 3-D tablet.  She made a motion, and from it sprang an image of a… well he was male, that was clear.  And even though he was the only thing visible, so there was nothing for scale, he was clearly huge.  

There was a sense of vastness and ancientness even through the image, even before Nora looked at his face.  His skin was purple, which rather than being funny gave him a sense of the regal, and the deep fissures in his heavy flesh were like the crevasses and cracks in the surface of a world.  One where lesser beings - and from the qualities Nora saw in his gaze he clearly thought all beings were lesser - would fall and be lost forever.

Lapsed Catholic or not, Nora had been raised in the church, and even though she wanted to be more sophisticated in her thinking she believed in evil.   Real, raw, Chthonic evil that was outside of any human’s ken, and the atavistic fear that she was feeling right now seemed to be proof that he was that.

It was also proof that living with Loki for a few months was the equivalent of memorizing a thesaurus, since she was certain she had never considered using the words ‘atavistic’ or ‘Chthonic’ before now.  

Then again, she had never needed them.

“That’s your daddy?”  She gulped.

“He stole me, and my sisters and brothers, from our families.  Or rather, he took us after he slaughtered them.  His own children were not up to his standards.  He needed perfect warriors, loyal to him, but able to think and act without his guidance, to forward his goals.”

“Which are?”

Nora had a feeling she knew the answer, but she wanted to hear it.

“To destroy all life.  Everywhere.  To kill all things as a sacrifice to his great love.  His only love.  Death.”

“Well that’s just dandy.  I can see why you probably don’t go home for long weekends,” she handed the tablet back to Gamora.  “But what I don’t see is what that has to do with Loki.”

“My father… Loki fell into my father’s hands when he was… fragile.”

Nora snorted and Gamora looked shocked.

“It was after he tried to die by his own hand.  When he let himself fall from the Bifrost, when he found out it was not actually Odin’s son, but was a Frost Giant.”

She said it as if it was just one of those things that everyone just knew, like that Jon Snow was actually a Targaryen.  

“I understood all of those words, but not how you put them together.”

So Gamora told Nora the story of Odin finding Loki in the ruins of Jotunheim, of the secret that was kept from him and everyone else, of how he had been raised to hate the very thing he was, of how he found out the truth during Thor’s exile so that he faced that betrayal without the support of his brother, of how he killed his birth father in an attempt to earn the AllFather’s love, of how he tried to kill his brother, of how he chose to let go when Thor tried to save him from falling to his death when faced with Odin’s disappointment.

Nora felt nothing.  Again.  Which meant that somewhere inside of herself she was feeling everything but was overwhelmed.  Again.

She nodded.  “Your father and Odin should write a parenting book together.  And then every copy of it should be burned, with the two of them on top.”

“Sadly they are both fire-proof.”

“Of course they are.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, and then Nora asked, “Ok, but how do you know all of that?  I mean, Loki isn’t exactly a sharer.”

Gamora nodded to herself, “You should know.  It is not my story to tell, however.”

Nora stood up and glared down at the intense warrior woman and then started to pace.

“Listen, I have been through some shit with Loki these last months.  No, these last fucking years!  Did you know that he has been on earth, stuck in the body of a Minnesotan IT professional who sweats if he watches t.v. too hard and walks like a  _ fucking _ farmer?  Because he has.  And that was who I was married to, and then I was married to Loki instead, except they were the same guy!  And he has treated me like garbage for most of that time and in both bodies, except a little bit at the beginning and now a little bit at the end and he says it's because he loves me and I think that might be true which is sick as sick gets, you know?  It really, really is, and I think that anything you know that might help me figure out why this has been happening to me, beyond his vanity being offended by the back hair and onset of male pattern baldness and the accent he got stuck with because you probably know how vain he is, right? EVERYONE knows how vain he is. If he loved his looks any more I think he would just marry one of those fucking doubles he creates.  Maybe he could do a bunch, in different sexes and colors and make a group marriage of it, except he would probably manage to be jealous of himself, right?  So, anyway,” Nora sat down next Gamora and grabbed her hand, “spill it, sister.”

The other woman looked overwhelmed by the words that had poured from of Nora and were now flooding her neatly kept room. 

A very quiet voice spoke from the doorway, “You should tell her, Gamora.  Your heart is in turmoil, as is her’s,” Mantis said.

Gamora looked a bit panicked at all of the girl stuff going on around her.  Emotions and feelings and talking….

She took a deep breath but before she could speak, Rocket’s oddly Jersey-sounding voice came over the comms, “Alright, everybody in your damned seats, we’re landing.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	15. Everyone Makes Mistakes. Some People Just Really Excel At It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No one has a very good day.

  
  


Endicott Five was not a space station, or a ship, or a colony.  It was a world where for some unknown and unremembered reason the original inhabitants of had decided to add their version of the number five to it’s name.  

The long since wiped out indigenous people who had only lived on two of the fourteen land masses spoke a language so complex and deeply entrenched in word play and the intentional confusion of outsiders, that it was entirely possible they had named their own planet ‘5’ just to make others think there  _ had _ been four more of them.

Since they had been wiped out the planet had been owned by seventeen different empires, coalitions, and corporations, all of them making the same mistake of trying to utilize the entire planet and not just the two parts the original inhabitants had.  

Because what could they possibly know about their own planet?  

They knew why they had named the remaining twelve landmasses  _ Ikunal Bour Endicott _ .

Which translated to  _ Highly Carnivorous Earth _ .  Which for once was not wordplay or intentional obfuscation on their part.  The actual soil on those other continents craved living flesh.

No one knew why or could stay alive long enough to figure it out.

Eventually the planet was abandoned by any legitimate (or at least organized) group, and the two safe continents had become a sort of Tortuga for the various space pirates and privateers who worked this part of the universe - Ravagers, of course, but also the Starjammers, the Star _ hammers _ , even a group that actually called themselves The Space Pirates (complete with capital letters), as well as dozens of other crews of unaligned thieves, rogues, robbers, pillagers, raiders, scalliwags, blackguards, outlaws, rascals, ne’er-do-wells, and even murderers.  

It was the best place to dispose of goods too hot for the typical fence, which Nora’s marriage necklaces clearly qualified as.  

Even with that said, Peter was not having a lot of luck.  He and Rocket were at Stennie’s Bar, the absolute court of last resort for anyone trying to turn goods into cash.  As early in the day as it was, there were only maybe a half-dozen truly desperate patrons drinking their breakfasts, Stennie’s generally being the kind of place best viewed in the darkest part of the night.

That was also true of Stennie.

Not that Stennie was unattractive.  Actually, Pete wasn’t sure if she was or wasn’t, her species being decidedly other, and a bit … tentically for his personal taste, but she  _ might  _ have had a really pretty face if you could look at it.  But decades before she had taken in a piece of cursed goods and was left with a skin disorder that caused the flesh on her face to turn translucent, with swirling orange, purple, and blue mist under it that caused anyone who looked at her for too long to get violently ill.

Stennie, philosopher that she was, figured it just meant she didn’t need to hire a bouncer.  Anyone caused too much trouble in her place, she just got up in their face and they threw themselves out.

Plus, she fucking killed it at poker.

But even without being able to read her expression, Pete could tell she was about to say no, even as he could also see one of her extra appendages reaching around to subconsciously stroke the priceless jewelry.

“Stennie, I see it coming, but don’t.  Don’t be an idiot and a coward, like Baka, and Dhil-n, and Kassabian, and all of those other fences.  You know that these are amazing.  That even if you offer me, say, 100,000 units, no, 200,000 you would still make a mint off of these!  You know you would!”

Rocket finished his beer, and started to open his mouth, but then stopped.  Even he had started to figure out that he hadn’t been very helpful when visiting the other fences.  When he called Dhil-n a “pile of stale turdburgers” not only had it not gotten them what they wanted, but they were un-politely invited to fuck themselves out of his place of business permanently.

Stennie hesitated.

Frustrated, Pete slapped the bartop, “C’mon, man!  I one time saw you take in a power ring belonging to a regenerating serial killer, who breathed fire.  And his fucking finger was still in it!   But you won’t take a couple freaking necklaces belonging to a princess?  I thought you were a bad-ass.”

Stennie’s whispery voice laughed at him, “I am a bad-ass, Quill.  But I don’t want Asgard trouble.  They’re War Gods.  And I really, really don’t want Loki trouble.  That fucker is crazy.  And mean as Hel.  And as Hela, for that matter.”

“But-”

“Listen,” she said, raising a tentacle to stop his objections, “IF I could break these beauties down to their parts, I would maybe, MAYBE, consider it.  But they were made with some pretty complex hoodoo, and some of that weird tech the Aesir use, so they can’t be broken up by anyone but the happy couple.  It’s sympathetic magic.  As long as they are in love these things will be unbreakable.”

Pete looked from side to side, his hands up, “What?  Wait?  Why didn’t anyone say that before?  I could have just-”  he snatched the necklaces back up.  “I’ll be back.”

Rocket looked up from his new drink - all of those tentacles came in very handy for bartending - “Where you goin’, I just paid for this!”

“Wait here.  I’m going to find Nora and be back with a pocketful of loose stones.  And you,” he pointed a finger in the vague direction of where he thought Stennie’s face might be, “I only take units or yen, so have cash on hand.”

Rocket looked at Stennie.  For some reason he was the only creature that didn’t seem affected by her condition.  Probably because almost every humanoid creature, regardless of how vaguely humanoid, looked the same to him.  Butt ugly.

“What the hell are yen?”  He asked.

Her tentacles shrugged.

 

The nightmare started like all of the others he’d had since Nora had left him.

Since she ran from him.

In his nightmare she was dancing.

She wore one of the old housecoats that used to belong to her aunt, her favorite clothing for being at home, for cleaning the kitchen or just sitting on the porch and reading.  They always smelled faintly of cigarettes, no matter how often they were washed, the brightly-colored cotton was soft, and she kept the pockets filled with crossword puzzles torn from the daily paper, extra pens, Kleenex, and Starlight mints wrapped in crinkling plastic.

It had never occurred to him before that there was nothing sadder than his wife wearing a dead woman’s cheapest, most worn clothing because they made her feel safe, which he had never done in either of their lives together.

But now she was dancing and smiling. For him.  For her husband.  For her king. 

Her favorite hiking boots not stopping her from lightly tripping along before him as he sat upon the throne of the AllFather.  Her long hair whirled, and she was more graceful than any dancer before - even though he knew that was not true.  Nora danced well enough, but it was not her gift.

She danced and danced.

He saw that dark and rotted blood seeped from the stitches of her boots.

Her eyes were the eyes of a corpse, clouded and sticky.

That her smile was a fixed things, her lips having been sewn into that form by heavy wire.

His hands were guiding her motions.

Loki stopped his hands, his heart shaking.  

Nora fell into a pile of limbs and hair, her neck cracking as she fell, her dead gaze on him, still smiling.

But this time he did not wake at that moment, as was usual.  Instead, slowly she pulled her lips open, her jaw breaking under the strain until finally her shredded mouth spoke, sad at being discarded as his toy, but still smiling and smiling, “I thought you loved me?”

He nodded, “Oh, I do,” he said, lowering himself out of the throne and crawling down the stairs to where she lay, taking her into his arms.   He kissed her torn lips gently, the broken wires tearing into him so he bled into her mouth.  “It’s why I gave you mine, after I killed yours.”

His hand opened the snaps holding her housecoat closed.  Nora’s chest was a gaping wound, the sharp points of her broken ribs guarding a void in which hung a heart - blue, and too large for her slight body, and steaming cold into the warm air.  

Loki kissed her again, “Say thank you, treasure.”

Dead eyes met his, “Thank you, my king.”

“Good girl,” he held her close, rocking her and murmuring endearments until he woke up screaming.

 

Waking in his rooms on the ship that he had acquired from the Vanir royal family by some small show of force, Loki clutched his chest, certain that he would not be able to feel his heart there.

No, it was pounding away, as if trying to free itself from him.

Icy sweat slicked off of his body, and he rose from his bed still naked and poured himself a glass of wine, barely able to raise it to his lips without shaking all of out of the goblet.  

After he had composed himself, he hailed Sif, not using the video component of the communications console.

“Any news?”

Her nervous voice answered after a few moments, “No, your grace, but the king h-”

He turned off the console and sagged into a chair, the wood that the Vanir insisted on using even in their space vessels was too smooth and too warm.  He manifested clothing around himself, not caring that it would be stained and ruined by his sweat and the wine that he had spilled upon himself.

No news yet again.  He had been chasing Nora for weeks now and other than learning a little more about the so-called Guardians of the Galaxy that she was travelling with (other than her Midgardian would-be seducer there were talking trees, and empaths, and heavily-armed vermin, oh my), they had found out nothing.  Clearly these miscreants were as good at hiding as they were at causing chaos.

To say nothing of Gamora.

He snorted.

_ Nora _ was with  _ Gamora _ .

It was like the refrain from a very, very bad song that one could not remove from one’s head without the aid of a blade or a bullet.

When he had first heard they were together it had been all Loki could do to make his way to his rooms before being terribly sick everywhere and then curling into a ball upon his bed, still covered in vomit.  His flesh awash in dread, and his body waiting for tortures that his mind could not convince it were not coming.  

Even though Gamora herself had not taken part in Thanos’ … reorientation of Loki, she had witnessed. 

She had seen.  

Impassive and disinterested, but her eyes had always been there.  Unlike her sister, Nebula, who had seemed dully horrified and had looked away over and over again in spite of their father’s insistence at that they scrutinize his good work, Gamora had watched every moment of the subjugation and destruction of his self.

He feared facing her again when they finally caught up with them.  He knew how Nora would react if he were to kill Gamora in cold blood, but Loki knew that he would not be able to stop himself.  Dreaming of covering himself in her blood had been one of the thing that had allowed him to keep a corner of his mind his own during those endless months of pain and humiliation.

It was his humiliation for which he planned to take her eyes.

And his blood could not help being cold, could it?  He snickered to himself.

Still, he had reasoned, if Nora was under the protection of the Guardians and Gamora was one of them, he at least knew she was reasonably safe.  Gamora was a terrifyingly powerful fighter, and she had learned cunning at Thanos’s knee.  It might explain how that rabble kept eluding him.

Pouring another drink with a steadier hand, Loki considered his options.

Recently he had reluctantly taken Volstagg’s advice - proof-positive of how truly desperate he was - and discreetly offered a sizeable reward for information on the whereabouts of the Guardians, the expression about honor among thieves being both truth and and truism.  But thus far his prey had enough good will amongst their criminal brethren- due to certain recent events- that nothing had come of it.

His drink was finished.

Odd.

He poured another.

His efforts were hindered by not wishing to mention Nora directly, not needing fortune hunters and other villains from around the universe to be seeking out such a valuable prize as an Asgardian princess, let alone one who was married to The Mad Prince Who Has the Most Enemies Ever!

Strange.  His wine was once again gone.

Maybe this glass had a leak.  

He looked at his trousers.  It occurred to him that he had been wearing them many days in a row, so they were filthy, but dry, so no leak.

Shrugging he poured again and found the decanter empty.  

He stood on questionable legs and went to find the bottle of spirits he had taken to bed the night before, surprised to find it empty as well.

Fortunately the one he has stashed beneath it was not.

It was whisky.

He had found it on one of his journeys for Odin. The two first things that tended to make it off of a planet - after kidnap victims - were profanity and liquor, so he was not so surprised.  It was Irish whisky, not Nora’s beloved Redbreast, but the rather more plebian Jameson’s, still he had thought how it would please her when he presented it to her.  

Rather than do that he had taken offence at her brief friendship with his brother and taken Nora’s attempt at having a safe haven from him away in the most degrading and hurtful way he could manage on such short notice.  He had given her a killing wound in the process, but it had taken him ages to notice her bleeding out.  

He needed to find her.

He needed to take her home.  Where she would be safe.

Home to Chicago, far, far from him.

It seemed like a poor idea to mix the whisky with the wine he had been drinking, so rather than fill his glass again he drank straight from the bottle.

 

Quill practically plowed into Gamora as he left Princess Nora’s room.  He seemed not to even see her, a worried look of distraction on his face.

Then he turned to look back into the room, “It’s… it’s totally ok.  It’s cool.  We’ll…. it’s cool.  I’ll think of something,” he said, and then rushed off.

Looking into the tiny room, Gamora saw her highness sitting on her bed, still dressed in Peter’s extra clothes - this time a pair of corded pants rolled up to her bare ankles, a faded shirt advertising something called MTV, and still no shoes since none of them fit her.  She was staring down at her hands.

The wedding necklaces that had been such a point of contention were back in their rightful owner’s hands, which pleased Gamora.  She saw that the princess had wrapped them around her fists, where the jewels had bored into her skin.  She was flushed and sweating, her teeth gritted with some manner of effort.

With a grunt she pulled, the stones and chains digging into her fingers but they remained perfectly intact, the metal not even the slightest bit stretched or fatigued by the efforts of the surprisingly strong Terran woman.  

“Princess, you should-”  Gamora tried to get her attention, but apparently she was as insubstantial to Nora as she had been to Quill.

Instead, she pulled again, this time shouting in frustration, the faceted gems on a few of the strands cutting her resilient flesh.  

No, they were reopening wounds.  The princess’s hands were covered in half-healed scabs and there was a nearly dried pool of browning blood at her feet, staining her toes.  She had clearly been trying to tear the necklaces apart for some time.  

Gamora noticed Nora was now looking at her, “Do you know what this means?”  She said, clearly miserable and filled with self-loathing.

She nodded at Nora, and then sat next to her, gently taking the necklaces from around her fingers, “What cannot be helped must be endured, your highness.”

“Don’t call me that,” she said by rote, as she had every time Gamora or Mantis called her by her honorific.

“Nora, then.  What cannot be helped must be endured.  I can tell you have long since learned that lesson, perhaps as a child.  I was a child when learned it from my father.  Loki learned it from him as well, but much later in life.  I think in his case it has not stuck.”

Now Nora was the one who twitched at the sound of the prince’s name, “You’re going to tell me that story.  Now.”  

Gamora wondered if she had any idea how she sounded then - firm, not open to contradiction.  

Regal.

She nodded, “Very well.”

  
  
  
  


 

 


	16. Those Who Say Cruelty Springs From Weakness Haven’t Met Thanos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Girl talk with Gamora and Nora.

 

They found the Asgardian Prince floating in the void, amazingly still alive.  

Even the Gods could not survive nullity between the stars for very long.   Indeed, his heart barely beat, and it seemed as if his body had had shut much of itself down to preserve what little of its strength and spark remained for protecting that heart.

Eventually, if brought in, he would heal, slowly and painfully, but the Gods were hard to kill.  Even his mind, though certainly harmed by the bottomless cold and lack of air, should come back to itself.  

More or less.

As Gamora watched, his stiff body turning slowly as the nearness of her ship created eddies in the stillness he hung in, his handsome face drawn and skeletal, his lips and fingertips blue with cold, a few tears (from grief she judged, her father’s tutelage having taught her much about tears) dangling from his long lashes. 

She wondered if she should leave him there.

Surely a peaceful end and a beautiful corpse were a better fate than he or anyone could hope for from Thanos, should she chose to take him on board.

But then, even though her crew seemed to be loyal to her, she knew their fear of her dread father was greater than any mere claim of loyalty.  It was true of her as well.  Any familial feeling she might have had for her fellow adopted siblings was easily overwhelmed by the constant terror Gamora had of what Thanos might do to her.  

To punish a failure.  

To teach a lesson.  

Or merely for distraction.

“Bring him aboard.  Have one him placed in one of the stasis fields.  That should keep him alive until we reach my father,” she ordered.

“Though for his sake, I pray he dies en route,” she thought to herself, as quietly as she could.

 

“So you were the one who-,” Nora stopped herself and took another drink of the cider-y, wine-like, fruit booze that Gamora favored.  

The Queen of the BadAsses was full of surprises, including a taste for purple, girly drinks.  Very, very strong ones.

Gamora nodded, looking slightly pink and ill.  

“So green-skinned people go pink when they are nauseated.  Interesting,” Nora thought, trying to distract herself from the image of Loki, corpse-thin(er) and drifting in space, having wanted to die.  No matter how sick with anger and hurt she was with him right now, the thought of him in that lonely emptiness hollowed her chest out.

“You’re such a sucker,” she said to herself harshly.  

“What?”  

“Nothing.  Go on.”

 

By the time they reached Thanos’s stronghold - both the castle and throne carved from the entirety of a meteor and then held in orbit by its master’s uncanny science around the oldest planet in a galaxy filled with long dead worlds - the Asgardian had nearly died three times even in stasis.  It took a will to die under those circumstance, and a great deal of magic to act on that will when even  unconscious.

But he was finally stable when they offloaded him to present to her father.

It was a shock that Thanos was actually waiting for them in the docks.  

Thanos rarely showed eagerness, and was always too busy either giving commands or working in his labs, or killing, to bother with something as plebian as his alleged favorite child’s return.

Clearly someone on her ship had told him of his new toy and he was eager to play.

Which meant now Gamora was certain that at least one of her crew was not trustworthy.  Which also meant she would now not trust any of them, and would have to find a way to dispose of them as neatly as possible

Her father was an effective teacher.

The thick metal over dense rock that formed the floor of the dock still trembled and echoed under the weight of the TItan’s tread.  The building had been built on an epic scale, and yet even the high ceiling and vast space seemed cramped when he walked there.  As he passed Gamora he very softly touched her shoulder, like the feel of a leaf falling onto grass, such delicacy seeming impossible for someone so enormous, but Thanos’s control of everything extended to his own body.

She had learned not to show fear to him.  It was one of the reasons he loved her the most of his many children.

Leaning over the glass casket in which the prince lay, Thanos said, “He is quite splendid.”  His voice, a sound of growing stone and grinding earth, was soft.  He cocked his head, a small frown between his eyes, “And even more of a … curiosity than I realized.”

“I am glad you like your trinket, father,” Gamora said, hating everything.

He ignored her, gesturing at the body, “Look.”

In the statis the Asgardian Prince -

 

“Loki.”

“What?”  Gamora asked.  

Nora had gotten up and was slowly, unconsciously pacing around the small, austerely decorated room, looking down at her feet as she walked.  As if she was recording Gamora’s confession.  

“His name is Loki.  And he’s not actually Asga-.   Look.  Just call him Loki, alright?”

Gamora nodded, knowing that Nora didn’t see her.

 

In the statis Loki’s body had changed subtly.  The azure of his thin lips and refined fingertips seemed to have spread, his visible flesh now entirely a pale blue, and thin lines, like perfect scars shaped by an artisan, scrolled across his face, the backs of his hands, and then quickly retreated and then returned again.

“His body is trying to both embrace and reject the cold at the same time,” Thanos mused, and then a broad smile crossed his face and silence fell as every one of his servants, children, and creations sensed a change in the air.  “Bring him to the Empty Room.  He can heal there while he recovers from being tossed from the heavens by his cruel family.”

Gamora frowned with confusion, “My intelligence suggests that his Highness chose to end his life father, not that -”

Now Thanos smiled directly at his favorite child and her heart wanted to stop, “He was thrown.”

 

“But-”

“No, your Highness, he was  _ not _ thrown!”  Gamora heard the outrage in her own voice and was shocked.  Even after all of this time the memory of the things she had witnessed for her father, because he loved to share his ‘work’, hurt just as much as the things she had done.  “He jumped.  But suicide was not useful to my father in his High-, in Loki’s case.  He needed resentment, not despair.  So he gave it to him.”

“How?”

Nora’s voice was dry.

“He… remade him… it took fire.  And knives.  And rape.  And kind comfort at the right moment.  And more fire.  So much fire.  Jotunns are hard to break.  Gods are hard to break.  My father longs to break reality itself and he has had a great deal of practice and the patience of immortality.”

“He burned him?”  Now Nora’s voice was nearly soundless, just a manipulation of air.

“With molten metal from ancient planets.  With the essence of fire itself.”

“He cut him?”

“With diamond blades that could slice even the toughest flesh.  He had his artists gave Loki mocking cuts that mimicked his Jotunn caste marks so he was forced to see himself that way even when he was in his Asgardian form.  And then they rubbed them with dried pepper and ground glass so they took forever to heal and burned all the while.”

“And rape?”

“He made him long for it and then took that longing away so he would find himself abhorennt in the aftermath.”

Nora sat back down, “You saw?”

“All of it.”

“I think I hate you.”

Gamora nodded, “How couldn’t you?”

“I’ll get over it.  I know you aren’t-” Nora stopped talking and put her very pale hand over Gamora’s dark green one, “So, your father won.”

“He did.  He remade Loki in his own image, put the Scepter in his hands, and sent him to Earth because he knew how much his brother loves it.  My father takes a special pleasure in pitting sibling against sibling.  But I always suspected that… your husband is exceptionally intelligent, even my father recognised it, and I always suspected that there was some part of himself that he kept to himself.  Maybe he didn’t even know it, but there was a part of him that was eager to sabotage his own… ascension to king on Earth?”

Nora laughed, not loudly, but genuinely.  “There is one thing I know about Loki, and that if there is a way for him to fuck someone who’s done him wrong, he’s going to find it.”  Then she laughed louder, but now with hurt, and she laughed until Gamora started to worry, she laughed like someone being ill.

“Princess?”

“Sorry,” she said, wiping her eyes, “it just occurred to me that my husband thinks everyone who hasn’t done him wrong yet just hasn’t gotten around to it yet, so why not be proactive?  A stranger, a friend, hell, a wife is just an enemy he hasn’t made yet, right?”

“And that is funny?”  Gamora knew that she did not have an especially good sense of humor, but this seemed far from humorous.

“No, it’s fucking tragic.  But it explains a few things,” she pulled her necklaces out from under the baggy, striped shirt from somewhere called Amoco that she was currently wearing.  It fairly reeked of oil and old metal.

For a long time she just sat there looking at the jewels.  “I really am a sucker.  Now I’m never going to break these fucking things unless he changes his mind.  It could happen.  He’s pretty flighty.  But I owe you all money.  Goddamn it!”  She stood up and stomped down the hall, Gamora following in her wake like a guard of attendant.

When they reached the bridge they interrupted Quill in the midst of singing along with a song about knowing what boys like. “Hey, ladies, what can I do you for?”

“Can you signal my husband’s ship?  I know it isn’t in the area and I don’t really know how these things work.”

Peter frowned, looking at Nora, then Gamora, then the ship control, then at Rocket who had wandered in behind them, and then back at Nora.  “Excuse me?”

“Can you-”

“The crazy, god husband who has been chasing us and probably wants to kill me.  A lot.  Like he wants to kill me and then bring me back to life and then kill me again?  That husband?”

“Don’t worry, Quill, he probably wishes to kill me far more than he does you,” Gamora said.

He started to say something, and then stopped, shaking a finger at her, “Not comforting, G.  Not comforting at all.”

“He probably wants to kill me, too,” Rocket said, both because it was true and because he hated to be left out of things.

“If it’s any comfort he probably doesn’t specifically want to kill Mantis, Drax, or Groot.  And I am 97% certain he doesn’t want to kill me.  He might do it back accident… whatever… anyway he probably wants to kill less than 50% of the crew, so he’s not going to fire on us.”

“Why do you wish to speak to him, if you have been running from him all of this time?”  Drax asked,  “I thought you despised him.”

“No, she loves him.  But she despises herself for it.  I have told you this,” Mantis whispered loudly to him.

“Why is everyone in HERE?”  Peter yelled.

“I am Groot?!” 

“I want to ask him for a loan.”

Gamora was fairly certain the ship had never been so quiet.

 

Loki had managed to wash himself and find something clean to wear, leaving his chambers on the ship for the first time in … 

He was not certain.

A week, perhaps.  No more than two.

He was also not certain why he was leaving now, but Sif had seemed to think he needed to be on the bridge.

His head felt as if several dozen drunken soldiers had tossed up their accounts into it and then shaken him briskly.

He offered a silent prayer of thanks to his mother’s spirit for insisting on his drilling his illusions until he could maintain them drunk, hungover, unconscious, or while reading.  It had been especially useful as a child so he could read during meals without incurring Odin’s wrath.

As he entered the bridge he discovered there was one thing that his iron control on his illusion of sobriety and hauteur could not hold up to.

The sight of his wife’s face on the view screen.  She seemed to be alone on the bridge of a very dowdy looking vessel.  As if they were back in her aunt’s kitchen, in their old life that seemed unreal now,  her hair was in a messy bun, her eyes were slightly tired, and she gave a just a little smile upon seeing him. Wary, but genuine.

It was not that any of that was what broke his deception.

It was when she said, “Hi,” very, very softly, as she used to every morning, getting up to pour him a coffee with just a touch of sugar.

He did not realise that the illusion had faltered until she lifted her hand, as if she could touch him through the screens, through the who knew how many galaxies separated them.

“Oh.  You look terrible.”

“You seem less triumphant about that than I would have thought,” he snapped.

She crossed her arms and cocked her head, chin up.  Unafraid of the blow that might come.  

Herself again.  

“Is it going to be like that?”

He shook his head, “No.”  Loki was so very tired of playing this game.

She smiled again, “Good.  Because we suck at… that.”

“I find myself with a sense of deja vu as I ask, what do you want?”

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who wants Loki's version of what happened when he was in Thanos's hands, you can find it here -
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/8591122/chapters/22841309


	17. “Absence is to love as wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small and kindles the great.” Roger de Bussy-Rabutin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The past and the present.

 

Chicago Two Years Earlier -

Circle Bowl was a tiny old twelve lane bowling alley with three faded but still unwarped pool tables and a surprisingly elegant u-shaped, bar made of maple in a threadbare lounge smelled of sweet whisky and cigarillos, even years into the smoking ban.  There was the faint sound of Jim Morrison's voice wafting hypnotically from the old, fuzzy speaker that hung in the corner above the shoe rental counter.

Nora leaned on the wall and watched her husband put a deft touch of left english on the cue-ball, knocking in the 8 to clear the table.  

Eddie tipped an imaginary hat to his shell-shocked opponent while scooping up the small pile of bills sitting at the foot of the table.  It was fair.  Perhaps only an elderly nun would seem to be a less likely looking shark than he was.

“Leinies?”  He called to Nora.   

She nodded, making a ‘keep ‘em coming’ gesture.  At the rate he was taking the barflies that hung out there the two of them and Deeana would end up hospitalized from taking advantage of the $2 Thursday special, although the other woman wasn’t drinking quite as fast as she was.

Deeana tapped the cue ball which moved a few half-hearted inches and then wobbled to a stop.  She froze for a minute and then turned around, “But he-”

Nora finished her pint, shaking her head.  She understood.  She had been young, and stupid about a boy before, hell, she was less young and plenty stupid about her own husband these days.  Which was why she had taken it on herself to drag the intern out of the office that afternoon to explain some things to her.  

Like why any guy who called you at work and made you cry was a bad guy to be even considering sleeping with.

Eddie had invited himself along, not because he had any advice to offer, but because he liked day drinking and taking other people’s money and hated his job.  

These days he kind of seemed to hate everything.  Even Nora.

Just a little.

Yeah, she had ALL SORTS of business giving romantic advice.

“Listen,” she said as Deeana slumped into one of the rickety wooden chairs that lined the small pool room, “what was it he said to you again?  Oh, yeah, how could I forget, ‘cause it's a classic - he told you that he was afraid that he was going to hurt you.  That he wasn’t good enough for you…. aaaaannnd, yeah, that he cared about you too much so you should just break up with him, because he didn’t think he could change.  Right?”

The little red-head nodded with a sniffle and then looked up, “But that just proves that he really wants-”

“To get laid and act just how he wants and always has acted.  When a guy tells you shit like that you need to believe him.  Because, listen,”  Nora sat down next to her, a bit hard, and thought that maybe she was already a little drunk, “listen, out of a hundred guys, when they tell you they are worried about hurting you - about seven or eight of those guys are genuinely being decent and warning you off.  They are the ones that won’t return your calls or answer your texts and emails.  They are trying to NOT be dicks.  We sort of love those guys, ‘cause they are trying, at least.

“Then - thanks,” she took the pint her husband was handing her, before he wandered off looking for another fish, “THEN there are the like two or three, maybe four in a good batch, guys who really like you and are really hoping that maybe they can change!  That your love will… I don’t know… elevate them, make them want to be a better man and blah blah blah… Those guys will break your heart too, but at least you know they will hate themselves for it.  So that’s something.

“There are the two guys who are flat out crazy and don’t know what they are saying most of the time anyway so they just repeat stuff from movies, and the half dozen who are intentionally just fucking with your head, which leaves us with… with...”

“Between eighty and eighty-five guys,” Eddie called out, multitasking at taking another drunk’s money and doing math in his head.  

Impressive.  No wonder she still loved him.

Yeah, no way she should be giving advice.

“Ok, over eighty guys who are being totally sincere, even if they don’t know it.  He’s telling you, ‘I want to fuck you, and then I am probably going to be a jerk, and since I have told you that it means I can do whatever I want and not feel guilty.  I warned you, so that makes me a nice guy.  And if, by some weird chance you are the girl I end up liking enough to bother to make an effort with, then I am a really, REALLY  nice guy and will be proud as fuck of myself.’”

Deeana started to say something, when the older African American man that Eddie had beaten earlier looked away from the baseball game that was playing silently on flatscreen over the bar, “She’s right, little girl.”

The aging bartender, her olive skin sallow from spending her days in the dark bar, nodded ruefully.

All of the other drinkers were conspicuous in their silence.

Deeana looked at Eddie, who had stopped playing and was looking at his wife strangely, “What do you think?”

For all that Eddie looked and sounded, and walked, like a failed farmer from rural Minnesota, there was something about Nora’s husband that had made Deeana nervous.  Every now and then there was a look in his eyes that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

And every now and then she saw him at work looking at Nora - when she was unaware of it - with such a hot longing that he seemed like a different man.

“I think Nora is better at giving council than at taking it,” he said, turning back to make the break.

 

Now -

Nora was delighted when she learned there were dive bars in space.  Stennie’s was exactly the kind of place she had loved at home.  Seedy, but with a dignity borne of decades of housing barroom philosophers, heartbroken romantics, and working men and women in need of a cheap drink and either temporary anonymity or the illusions of camaraderie.

Aunt Claire had been an aficionado of such places, and Nora had learned all about them long before she was old enough to drink.  Even illegally.

Which is how she could tell a fight was going to start in less than five minutes.

First Rocket was going to say something to the other furry, but much, much larger, patron.

“My aunt was prettier than you are, and smarter, and she was a fucking coat!”  He spat up into the fanged face of the other creature.

And then there would be a shove.

Either the creature didn’t know how strong it was or it wanted to escalate things, but Rocket pretty much flew across the floor into Drax’s back, causing the enormous man to spill his drink down Mantis’s dress.

Because he was in love with the gentle, quiet girl, even if he didn’t know it, Drax took a great deal of exception to that, and grabbed Rocket, flinging him to the ground and stalking towards the furry creature.

“Whaddid I do?”  Rocket grumbled, climbing to his feet and rushing to get back to the action.

Nora sighed.  “Pete, maybe you should-”

Quill looked at Drax and vaguely Wookie-ish creature, “Oh, no.  I don’t think so,” he said.

Gamora gave him a disgusted look and got up to try and defuse the situation.  “Yeah, that’s probably going to make it worse,” he added.

This was really not the time.  Loki and whoever was with him was supposed to be meeting them here in the next hour or so.  Which was probably why this was happening, actually.  Everyone was a little on edge.  No one moreso than Nora, but you didn’t see her picking any fights.  

“Yeah, yeah, DOWN!” Quill could see the bar from where he was sitting, and so grabbed Nora’s arm and yanked her under the table with him just as a giant, fuzzy shadow flew over it, slamming into a table of various... beings playing some kind of game with coloured chips and knucklebones.

And then it was on.

There was glass flying and liquor splashing everywhere, and bodies as well.  And vomit, since if a particular part of the chaos looked to be turning deadly the owner, Stennie herself, would simply tap one of the fighters on the shoulder and when it turned to look, would get her horrific non-face into theirs, letting nausea act as her bouncer.

Mostly though, she seemed content to let the fight work itself out as long as nothing too valuable got damaged in the action.

Nora motioned to the terrified, frozen Mantis and they crawled behind the bar, while someone grabbed Quill by the ankle and dragged him unwillingly to the fray.  

“Want a drink?”  She asked the spooked girl, “It might help, if this is too much for you.”  Nora wasn’t really sure how her powers worked.

“This is not so bad.  There is no true malice, only some anxiety, and joy, and… OH!”  The pretty girl put a hand to her mouth, staring wide eyed at her.  

Nora cocked her head with a frown and then nodded, “He’s here, isn’t he?”

There was a sound of many booted feet on the rough tiled floor of the bar, and Sif’s voice giving an order that Nora couldn’t make out above the incredible din, but apparently whoever she gave it to could, because there was a new, much more organised sounding level of violence in the room.

“Yes.  Oh, how do you bear it?”  Mantis breathed.

“Bear what?”  She asked, even though she thought she knew the answer.

But before that could be confirmed, she heard Loki bellow, his voice like a shockwave, pushing all of the other noise out of it’s path. 

Calling her name.

Nora stood, smoothing the knockoff New Orleans Saints jersey she was wearing over a pair of Gamora’s leather leggings down, and giving her something to do with her hands.  

A small contingent of einherjar had quickly ended the brawl and now stood with indolent assurance around a heap of bodies, and she was happy to see that none of the Guardians was in it.  Rocket was sitting on one of the still upright tables, scooping up the money left by fallen gamblers.  Drax was looking for Mantis, visibly relieved to see her safe.  Quill was standing very still, his hands raised, giving a charming smile to Sif, whose eyes were rolling in spirit if not actuality.

Gamora was near Loki, a look of deep discomfort and readiness on her lovely face.

He still looked tired and worn and hung over and he was the most beautiful, most utterly perfectly glorious, fucked up thing in the universe to her.  He wore what Nora thought of as his casual armor, where the strips of leather seemed wound around his torso in a V, and his wonderful hair was just a touch disheveled.  

She could even smell the cold forest and smoke essence of his skin from where she was.  Tinged with just a little stale whisky.  

“I’m kind of doomed,” she thought.  

She opened her mouth to say something, but before she could Loki stepped around Gamora as if he didn’t see her and walked toward Nora, his eyes locked on hers, his swagger tight and narrow, as if holding himself in deep check.

When only the bar separated them, he said, “You are unharmed?”  His voice was soft and raspy and dark, his expression tense and searching.

“I’m totally fine.”

“Very well then.  Here.” He reached into… somewhere, Nora was too busy looking at his eyes to see where.

He placed a flat package on the bar in front of her.  “There are loose stones equalling fourteen million in American dollars for you.  It was all I could gather on short notice.  Captain,” he said to Quill, still not looking away from her, “If you take Nora safely home I will see your crew receive a million credits each upon your return.”

And then, without another word, he turned on his heel, “Gamora,” he said with a gracious tilt of his head as he passed her on his way out of the bar.

The silence in the bar was profound.  That kind of money could do that.

Even Drax and Mantis were stunned, although it seemed like in her case it had less to do with the money and more to do with the overwhelming, roiling gloom that even Nora could feel swirling around Loki’s shoulders.  Like bony fingers ready to grab him and pull him backwards into darkness.

“Oh, HELL NO!”  Nora growled, putting a booted foot into the dry slop sink, and then climbing onto the bar, running along its length to the door, where she jumped off and landed in a surprisingly graceful crouch in front of her startled husband.  

She was starting to get the hang of being a bit more than human.

In a move that she learned from watching him, Nora unfurled herself upwards, inches from him, “So are we divorced now?”  She asked, putting her fingers to his leather-case chest and pushing lightly with all ten fingers.

Caught off guard, he stumbled back a step.  Righting himself, he gave her a haughty glare. “Yes.”

“Huh.  That was easy.  So then,” she reached under the jersey and pulled off the necklaces, holding them out to him in a tight fist, “then you want these.  For when you meet someone more princessey.  Someone… worthy of you.”

He stepped back again, as if he had been shoved even harder.  “No, it would be inappropriate - I would create new- I have no intention of-”

“Then we should talk.  Because...” she grabbed the dangling stones in her other hand and pulled with all of her enhanced might.  

All she succeeded in doing was reopening some of the cuts there.

Loki took a convulsive step forward, grabbing her hands, cradling her palms up in his.  They both had completely forgotten their captive audience.  “You have hurt yourself,” his voice hushed.

“And that’s your job, right?”  She laughed.

“I no longer want that employment,” he said, closing her fingers around the necklaces, “and it makes me wild that… that you cannot destroy these.  What that means.  How?”  He dropped her hands, his face contorted with confusion and pain, “Why?  Why would you love me?”  Then he drew himself up contemptuously, “Is it pity?  I am sure that Gamora told you of my little run in with her darling daddy,”  he stepped around her, still heading for the door.  “Thanos does rather make one appreciate Odin’s fathering style,” he said to her back, his tone now light and mocking.

“Gamora told me.  AFTER I couldn’t break these.”

She could feel him freeze behind her.  

Which was a bit funny, considering what else Gamora had told her.

Actually, a lot of this was striking Nora as funny all of a sudden.  

“That’s-”

Nora could barely hear him.

She started to turn, when Rocket spoke, “So, are we going or are you two just going to stand there and put on a show all day?  Cause if you are I’m gonna get Groot from the ship.  He looooovves those Earth soap operas Quill has tapes of, and this is just like that garbage.”

She finished turning to Loki, opened her mouth, and then burst out laughing, “We need to talk, without an audience.”

He nodded once, “I concur.”

He was trying so hard to be good, she could feel it.

As they left the quiet and confused barroom, Rocket could be heard grumbling, “Damn, it was just getting good… hey, so she left those jewels.”  Then there was the sound of a sword being swiftly unsheathed, “Ok, lady, geez…”

Nora laughed again, and she felt Loki’s fingers tentatively brush hers.  That small touch felt good.  Better than anything had in a long time.  And wondering if she was making a terrible mistake she took his hand, letting him lead her into the night.

  
  
  
  



	18. There is a Thin Line Between Love and Hate.  There is an Even Thinner One Between Lust and Extreme Awkwardness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nothing goes as expected for anybody. Including the author.

 

Loki was trying to figure out what had just happened and how it had gone  _ so differently _ than he had imagined it would.

It had seemed self-evident to him that they would arrive at the tavern Nora’s new friend Star-Fraud had chosen for their meeting to find her coolly distant, whilst surrounded by her new allies, eagerly awaiting the arrival of the funds he was delivering that would allow her to flee him further.  She would offer Loki both scorn and indifference with - if he was greatly fortunate - just a feather’s brush of warmth in her eyes when she thought he wasn’t looking.

But rather…

Rather he, Sif, and her handful of einherjar had walked into the saddest excuse for a bar-fight it had ever been his misfortune to witness.  While the red-marked primitive was acquitting himself well enough, and Gamora wildly outclassed every other combatant in the room, everyone else was just an embarrassment to drunk misbehavior - swinging wildly, with neither enough abandon nor finesse.  

There was hardly enough broken glass to form a window, apparently only one chair had been smashed, and no one was hanging from the light fixtures.  Even the large mirror behind the bar - which was clearly a provocation to any right-minded rioter - remained in one piece.

Pitiful.

For a scant moment Loki rather wished he was on better terms with his bro-

With Thor.  

They could show these paltry morons how to really destroy someone’s place of business.

Rolling his eyes, he gave Sif a look.  

Moments later order was thankfully restored, which was when it occurred to him that Nora was nowhere to be seen.

He called for her.

Perhaps a touch emphatically.  Certainly it caused a bit of apprehension in both the prisoners and Nora’s new friends.  Especially Gamora who was clearly expecting some manner of encounter with him.  As much as that might please him, until he was certain his princess was well he had no patience with anything else.

Then Nora stood up behind the bar, looking as if she had taken shelter there early enough to be unaffected by the weak altercation.  After a moment of looking around, she turned her gaze to him, just as indifferent as he feared.  She opened her mouth, but before she could speak to reject him, he took the initiative, hoping to end the matter and leave before his heart fell apart within him.

Instead, minutes later, they were walking together down one of the dark side streets of the smugglers’ town, and she had taken his hand when he had offered it.  She walked slightly ahead of him with an apparent destination in mind.

For a short while he was content to allow himself to be led.  Loki had been alternating between intoxication and hung-over for days.  Actually more than days.  His head and guts had feeling of having been bruised by a fall.  He could have cured the pain at any time - anti-drunkenness spells being amongst the first magic he had learned - but he had prefered to punish himself.

No, that was a lie.  It was not for punishment.  The discomfort was just a convenient blind for his thoughts and at the moment it made him vulnerable.  It was because of his self-indulgence that Nora had seen him plainly, seen him with pity, when she had contacted him for funds.  

He refused that pity as he might a poisoned apple.

With a small expenditure of power he burned the liquor from his system, clearing his head.

“What was that?”  Nora stopped, cocking her head as a breeze smelling of alcohol, night-sweats, and fear gusted past her.

“Nothing.  Merely leveling our playing field,” he answered tartly, letting go of her hand to stroke a lock of hair back from his brow.

She barked a laugh at him, clearly noticing his new sobriety.  “Really?  Good.  I hate having all of those advantages over you... What were they again?”  She walked a bit faster, pointing, “There’s a little, private wooded park up here.  Kinda weird because of the type of town this is, but still.”

It was a pretty space, surrounded by trees and a high fence.  Nora started to climb over, but Loki put a hand on her shoulder and shook his head, “No.  You are a princess.  Have a little dignity.”

He pointed one finger sternly at the lock and it meekly clicked open.

She shook her head at him, eyes rolled to the heavens.  “You are such a bully, I swear to god.”  But she entered anyway after giving him a sarcastic little curtsey.  She took a winding path through the trees to the left, again leaving him to follow.

“So then I gather that you are now going to tell me the conditions you are placing on my having your love?”  He said as with as much chilly hauteur as he could manage.  So much in fact that a sudden frost blighted the leaves on one of the limbs that bowed over his head.

Loki had never allowed himself to be restrained by the desires or needs of another.  Through his youth he had chafed at even the slightest effort to curtail his wants or freedoms.  Even at the sensible ones.

Especially at those.

Nora turned her head back and flashed him a gutting smile, “No.  My love is unconditional.   _ Clearly. _ Unconditional and blind and all of that other dangerous stuff.  You being in my life, though?  There are plenty of conditions on that.” 

They had reached a small, wrought-metal bench in an even more secluded grove.  Nora sat, patting the space next to her like he was some manner of hound being given permission to clamber onto the furniture.

Loki chose to stand.  

Nora shrugged, “Whatever.  Condition one, why d-”

“What makes you think I care about your conditions?  Or, more to the point, what makes you think that I shall not simply sweep you up right now and return you to my chambers and my bed where you belong, as we both know that there is naught you can do to stop me?”  

The temperature in the park dropped just enough so that Nora’s words came out in a pale smoke.

“Naught?  Nice one.” She stood so she was close to him, too close.  Her breasts, the peaked nipples apparent even through the jersey she wore, just barely touched his armor and it was like his chest was on fire there, even though he could not actually feel them through the leather.  Her head was tipped up and her warm breath stroked his neck, his jaw, his lips.  “Is that the plan?  To take me back to Asgard and lock me up and never let me out except for the odd ceremony?  To fuck the will out of me again?  Ok,” she put up her wrists, “let’s go.”

She was daring him!  Smirking and staring into his eyes and…

They were so close together that her hands were practically cupping his face and he could smell that she wore a tiny bit of some perfume that was redolent with smoke and ginger.  He wondered if it had been a gift from Quill.

“Just remember,” she stood on her toes, “you have to sleep sometime, you ass.”  Then she kissed him, quick and firm, her mouth pushing onto his like it was a punishment, her hands grabbing at his hair like it was salvation.

The entire universe became perfectly still for Loki.  The only sound was Nora’s soft keen and the erotic, liquid noises of her lips and tongue attempting to seduce him through the wall of anger, cruelty, and ice that he was desperate to rebuild between them. 

His arms locked around her, taking fistsful of her baggy shirt so she would not feel his hands shaking, his unworthy mouth open and gasping and kissing.

 

“Well, that was unexpected,” Nora thought to herself about her own behavior as she found herself egging Loki on when he started playing his offensive-defensive game with her again, trying to hide his weaknesses behind arrogance and superior firepower.  

“What the hell am I doing?”  She yelled at herself mentally as she invaded his personal space, her body wanting him in the worst way possible - which was how she had had him most of the time - while her mind tried to get her mouth in line and failed miserably.

“Oh, fuck it,” she thought, “I can always stab him and run,” giving in to her dumbest and most powerful instinct and kissing him.

For a moment it seemed she was in this alone until he made a sound that she was pretty sure would make anyone who heard it either hard or wet as the case may be and was on her, his mouth aggressively eating into hers as if he could devour her.  His grip on the back of her shirt tightened and tightened as he twisted it until it disintegrated under his hands.

For a second he stopped and stared down at her bare breasts in shock.  

Nora shrugged, “I wasn’t wearing one when I left and all of the ones on Pete’s floor were all the wrong size.  Or the wrong number of cups.”

At the mention of Quill’s name Loki growled and suddenly there was too much white under his hooded eyes. 

Crazy, crazy eyes.

He scooped under her ass, lifting her, her legs wrapping themselves automatically  around his waist.  After a few moments of hasty, rough frottage she found herself deposited on the bench, the cold metal making her back arch into his chest.

Loki lowered his mouth to her breasts, murmuring a word again her skin.  One of the leather straps that held his armor in place unscrolled from around his thigh, flowing between her legs, up her chest, and then wrapped itself around one of her arms, pulling it behind her to to lash to the bench.  Loki licked at her nipple, in soft, flat tongued strokes while another strap came loose and repeated the action on her other wrist.

After rubbing itself a bit more firmly against the cotton between her legs.

He switched to her other breast, while alternately pinching and warming the one he had left behind.  “Is your Midgardian friend’s mouth as talented as your husband’s?”  He whispered, nipping enough to hurt and then comforting her with a gentle suckle.

“Condition number one,” Nora moaned, barely able to keep her head up but wanting to watch him as he worked his way back and forth, “stop pretending that you, aaaooohhh, that you don’t know I’m not interested in anyone but you.  You know better, you just like - FUCK! - pretending to be the injured party…  You know  _ me  _ better…”

The last ended with a sighing hiss.

Loki looked up, his beautiful eyes narrow not with anger but with consideration, and finally with a slight frown.  “Granted.  I do know you,” he nodded, placing the heel of one of his large, elegant hands between her legs, then slowly rubbing in a circle while staring at her face.  “You are soaked through.”

There was an impassive quality to both his gaze and voice that she knew was another lie.

“You are praaacacactically, hnnnn, ripping through those pants.  And they’re space leather or whatev-- AH!” She lifted up to try and alleviate what was an almost painful pleasure and then gave up and started to circle her hips.  “Condition two.  I’m not living on Asgaarrrrdddddddahhh.”

Her leggings were gone and it was like she could practically hear the rasp of his calloused palm across her clit.

Loki raised an aristocratic brow at her lack of underpants.

She shrugged.  “There’s no Target around here,” the cold of the bench beneath her clearing her head for a second.

He slid a long finger deep into her.  “Would you consider residing on Vanaheim permanently?” he asked with utter calm.

“Yesssss... If Diole won’t mind.  OH, that!  Do that...”

“This?”  He turned his hand to tap softly at her g-spot, “Or this?”  He pulled his hand out and plunged back in with two fingers going terribly deep to brush lightly on something that made her hips snap hard.

“Yesss, yes,” she pushed harder and harder.  Her concentration was starting to falter under his touch and the studied way he stared at her face.  She squealed as he bent his head to toy with just the very tip of her clit with the point of his tongue.

She was going to come her head off soon but she refused to finish before she finished so she sped through her list.  “Conditionthreeyoumakeupwithyourbrother.  Conditionfouryouexplainyourselftomeeventhoughyouhateit.  Conditionfiveyoudon’ttakerevengeonanyonewhohelpedme.  ConditionsixyoudontEVERtryandlockmeupagain.  ConditionsevenyoustopwhenItellyouto… IknowIhaven’tactuallyeversaidstopbeforebutImight!”

Exhausted from holding on to her need to come and from trying to get everything out Nora panted, her thighs rigid and aching from holding her in place, her cunt throbbing, her nerves radiant.

Loki lifted his head, his mouth wet, his eyes closed in pleasure and when his tongue glided out lick his lips it nearly sent her over the edge, “Is that all?” he asked slowly, his eyes blinking like a pleased and drowsy snake laying on a warm rock, his voice thick as honey.

With her last reserve Nora looked him in the eye and said very calmly, “Last condition.  You need to treat me like someone you love.”

He sighed, with a rueful smile.  “Oh treasure, I’d like to think I could do better than that.”

He cupped the back of her neck and pulled her mouth to his in a surprisingly poignant kiss while ruthlessly fucking her with his hand until she came in a gush and a scream of pleasure and necessity.  Loki held her against him with great tenderness as she rode it out, the pleasure that went on and on.

When she finally finished, still whimpering into his ear, he whispered, “Allow me to answer your desiderata,” while he thrust into her, “point by point.”  

  
  
  



	19. Reciprocity is the Key to Every Relationship

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki calmly discusses Nora's needs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the short chapter.

If he had been perfectly honest with himself - and the hilarity of  _ that _ possibility did not escape him - Loki would have hazarded his all that he would never again find himself couched within his sweet wife’s transcendently smoldering cunt, with her essence thick upon his lips and her pulse fluttering beneath his teeth.

While he had never needed more proof of the basic unfairness of the universe, it was still presenting itself to him in the sensation of Nora’s breath scorching his skin.  Of her long legs wrapping themselves around his slowly undulating hips, while catching her heels on his thigh armor so she could push herself up to meet him.

“Untie me,” Nora’s voice hitched musically in her pleasure.

“Why?  You look so lovely spread out like that for me, your breasts taut and begging for more attention.”

“I want to pull your fucking hair,” she laughed into his mouth with a kiss.

She was laughing.  

With him.  

At him.  

Near him.  

Loki did not care which, only that it happened.

The straps slithered hastily away from her delicate arms, leaving lovely, red criss-crossing marks from her wrists to her shoulders.  Rather than returning to his legs, the leather bands slid down Nora’s torso, wrapping themselves in an elaborate weave about her waist, embracing her ribs, then crossing her breasts so they were presented for his tongue.

She wrapped her hands just as firmly if with less artistry deep in his hair and pulled.

“Harder,” he insisted around a mouthful of nipple, biting softly to urge her on.

Nora pulled harder, and bent her head to bury her face against the top of his head, while Loki snaked an arm under her hips to angle her so he could go deeper, push past any resistance, to both hurt her and give her as much pleasure as she could tolerate.

“Condition one,” he spoke, using an illusion to make his voice sound calmly authoritative, two things he was far from actually feeling. “I do not know if I can stop my jealousy, for it is impossible to me that any creature is incapable of desiring you, but I will cease pretending that I do not trust you utterly.  

“That you are not the only one I trust at all.”

With that he softly traced a rune on the small of Nora’s back with his fingertip, causing ecstatic magic to flow into her, very pleased that none of her conditions had as much as brushed up against the issue of his magic.

The resultant orgasm was a gentle tide sweeping her up in a series of luscious waves, her head resting on the back of the bench, her neck arched and tiny gasps coming rapidly from her open mouth.  He wanted to look into her eyes, but her lashes fluttered too rapidly for him to see what he longed to see in their depths.

When Nora calmed again, Loki spoke, more slowly now as his illusion of control slipped ever so slightly, “Condition two - I will never make you return to Asgard, but I fear that my father may have other plans in mind.  I will do  _ anything  _ I can to shelter you from his gaze, but I- I would prefer not to lie to you about my hopes.  The AllFather is not easy to elude for long.  No one knows this as I do.”

Another rune, this one formed by his breath blowing into her ear, making her shudder into a harder peak, her radiant, molten cunt pulling him farther in, making his arms shake as he steeled himself for more of this ordeal.

“Condition three,” now he started to thrust harder, more than a little put out to have to think of Thor at a time like this.

In spite of the lascivious rumors about the two of them.

“Condition three….. this matter is also not entirely under my control.  But for you I will… uh by the old gods you are so….” he shook his head and continued, “I shall make an effort.  A valiant effort.  A prolonged, sustained, heroic, oh  _ hel _ …” he quickly licked another symbol over her no-doubt aching right nipple that made her spasm and her hips buck.

“Conditionfour,” now he was talking as fast as a Midgardian carnival barker, “Iwilltellyoueveryfoulsecretofmyblightedheartandmutilatedmind, thoughyouwillnotthankmeforit.”  As he rattled on more of his fortitude slipped and for a brief moment his eyes flickered bloody red, his skin turned morning blue, and the cold of his flesh touching the heat of hers wrapped them in a dense cloud of mist.

“Oh.”  Nora touched his face, tracing the marks on his brow with a look of unshakeable wonder.  “How… extraordinary…”

That was more than Loki could tolerate.  He was... unready to confront his true nature, let alone being able to watch Nora embrace it.

Reverting to his Aesir form, he served her left breast as he had it’s sister, and again Nora’s orgasm nearly drove him mad as he fought to not follow her into the pleasure.  

Panting, her head fallen back, she gave him a weary half-smile, “You’d be surprised what I can take.”

No, he would not.

Then she clutched at his shoulders, exhaustedly pulling herself up to kiss him very, very gently.  “I want to see that again, when I can relax and… explore.”  And then kissed his cheek, nuzzling against the light stubble there.

The very tenderness of the act drove him wild and as he held her so he could whisper closely in her ear he pounded away at her, not caring if he destroyed the bench, himself, Nora, or if the whole park went up in flames.

“ConditionfiveIhavenoplanstocauseharmto… thatblondecreaturefromyourhomeoranyofhiscompatriots… ohhh, treasure, Nora, wife… notevenGamora… whodeservesmygreatestand… mostagonizingspiteand… fuck!  WhoIamassuminghasspokentoyou… uhhhhhhhffffff... about...”

He could not continue on with that line of thought.

He spoke the next spell -  _ hafa hátt _ **-**  and the resultant peak causing her to scream a note of A over middle C that could no doubt be heard by those very compatriots that they had left blocks away and forced Loki to use magic on himself to keep from spending.

“Conditionsixnonevernevernever, nomatterhowafraidIamoforforyou, neverneverneverneveragain.  IcouldnotIamsoafraidtoharmyourtodestroyyoutopushyououtoftrueandhaveyounotabletofindyourself… aaaahhhhh, tobreakyouasIhavebeenbrokenandremadeneverneverneve...”

Unable to stop himself from expiating, through words if not yet through actions, even as he spoke he now drew the character directly onto her clit.

Loki thanked the gods of the gods for the strange turn Nora’s body had taken upon eating Idunn’s apple, because every one of her muscles had increased in strength and the orgasm she now had was powerful enough that for a moment he thought it was going to rip the cock straight off of his body.

He needed the invigorating near agony of it to clear his mind sufficiently to finish his retort.

Nora looked less certain that it was a good idea.

“Why haven’t you… “ she gasped out, “why?  Did you forget how to come while I was gone?”

Now he laughed, his head thrown back he laughed into the final condition, which quickly turned into moans as he let himself go.

“Condition!  Fuckinghelyoufeellikeparadise... Seven!  HowdidIlivewithoutyou?  Beforeyou?  Afteryou?  Ididnotlive.  Iexisted.  Condition!  Seven!   YES!  YES TO ANYTHING!  YES TO EVERYTHING!”

It then occurred to him what he had just promised Nora, and what she could do having that power over him at this moment

Please though, he prayed to himself in the one quiet corner of his mind, please do not choose to use it now.

Their faces were very close together.  Only a few humid inches separated their mouths, and Nora stared at him with a cruel smile that clearly mimicked the one that he had given her the many times when she had craved his mercy and he refused her.

Loki braced himself for a case of blueballs that would even horrify his Jotnar ancestors.

Nora brushed her lips across his.  “Yes.”   She sounded tired.  She sounded certain.  And he was not entirely sure what she was saying yes to, so addled was he with need and fear.

He froze.

“What?”

“I accept your capitulation.  Husband.”

Artlessly, mindlessly, and with nothing but brutality and joy, Loki’s hips battered Nora, his hands and mouth everywhere, as if he could devour her and eliminate the last of his fears that she could leave him again, spending with a flood of magic that roiled out of him, Nora’s last final, wrenching pleasure going on around him, and everything flashing to light.

 

When Nora woke up the sky was growing paler.

She pulled herself up onto her elbows and looked around at the small park which glistened and glittered in the growing morning, every leaf, flower, and blade of grass flash-frozen.

Loki, still dressed, had held her close and wrapped them both in his voluminous cloak where they had collapsed on a grassy mound in the middle of the park.   Neither of them had been able to make it any farther, and a freak snowstorm had started to fall hard almost as soon as they had both…

Wow.

She fell back down and Loki, still asleep, pulled her against his chest.  

They were in a perfect circle of summertime, the grass beneath them still green and lush, the earth awake.  

“Loki, wake up.”  She shoved at him.  “C’mon, what if someone walks their space doggie here in the mornings?  Do you want anyone to see us, to see me, like this?  And you’re still hanging out of your armor, by the way.”

He opened his eyes, blinking slowly like a warm cat, a very annoyingly pleased smile spreading across his lips.  “We have been invisible to prying eyes since we entered the park, treasure.  Inaudible to lustful ears.  I do not share.  Now go back to sleep.  We have hours before the illusion breaks and I will need my strength refurbished to see you clothed before we leave this idyll.”

She settled back against him.

“Then what?”

He rested his forehead against hers, sighing, “Then as quick a trip to Asgard as can be managed, to gather your things, your Midgardian things, and for me to… see my brother.”

  
  
  
  



	20. All’s Well That Ends Well, if You Like That Sort of Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki has a family chat, Nora kills time, they both need a bath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbeta'd because my beloved Caffiend is having life this week. All mistakes are my own and there are probably a lot of them.

Two (Midgardian) Months later….

It was springtime on Vanaheim.

Or at least that’s what Diole said.  As far as Nora could tell it was always springtime on Vanaheim, since the weather remained mostly the same during her last stay and now this one.  Apart from a day of rain showers now and then it was always either like a cool, bright day in April or a warm, soft one in May.

Since it was spring, the old woman was planting herbs in one of the farthest corners of the massive garden that took up several acres.  Nora had offered to help her and had been rewarded with an annoyed frown. “Why? Do I look so febeel to you?”

She did.  Diole looked like she made of paper that had been soaked, rung out, dried, torn a bit and was added to a lot more paper that had been treated the same way to make an elf.  

Paper mache, Nora thought.  Then she wondered if they had paper mache on Vanaheim, or anywhere else in the Nine Realms other than earth.  She tried to imagine little Asgardians taking little Asgardian kindergarten, making paper mache bilgesnipes and dragons to take home.  Fingerpainting pictures that the would take home to hang on the-

They didn’t have refrigerators so where did the gods hang report cards and crude drawings of castles with their families standing outside of them?

Diole was staring at her, and Nora realized she had just been standing there, staring into space for a while.  

“Sorry.  Just thinking about something.  No, I’m sure that your a very strong… elf… I just thought you might like the company.  And now, thinking about that, of course you don’t. See you later.”

Diole was still grumbling to herself as she disappeared over a small hill covered in blue ground cover.  

Nora was losing it.  

She had been on Vanaheim for weeks and weeks, alone with her thoughts and Diole, which was like being in luxurious solitary confinement with nagging.  

After they had reached their detente, or whatever you might call it, in that park on whatever planet they had been on Loki had acted quickly, making sure her friends, the Guardians, were satisfied with their payment and making it clear that they were never to see Nora again.

Ever.

Nora had then told them not to listen to him, that they were welcome to visit her anytime they wanted, and told Loki that if he was going to be afraid that she was going to run off and join the circus at the drop of a hat this whole thing just wasn’t going to work.  

He had tried to stare her down.

It didn’t work.  She had him now and he knew it.  Hated it, would push it as often and as hard as he could, but knew it anyway.

“Fine,” he snipped, turning to look at Quill, his head cocked and his eyes eerily empty, “but I would recommend not coming when I am at home.”

Quill swallowed a bit, and then nodded, “Right.  Right. That is a good idea. Really good. Right, Gamora?”

Gamora gave her consent in silence.

Rocket was clearly doing mental calculations as to how much there might be to steal at a god’s house and looked ready to do the procyonid version of swooning.  He even had to place a paw on Groot’s arm to keep his legs from giving out.

Mantis peeked from behind Drax, nodding hard enough to make her antennas bobble adorably.  Loki’s emotions might have been more positive than when they left the bar, but were still strong enough to hurt. Like someone yelling, “I’M SO FUCKING HAPPY!” right in her face at the top of their lungs.

Nora had given everyone a quick hug goodbye, allowing Loki to drag her off to his ship, clearly still certain she would change her mind.

Back at the Asgardian ship - massive, golden, and cold as Chicago in February - Loki had directed they be flown to Vanaheim, ignoring several urgent messages from Odin and a few irritable ones from Thor telling him to contact the AllFather so he would leave him alone, too.  

“That’s a good sign,” Nora had said, following him to his chambers, “Thor sounded more annoyed with you than ang-  Holy Fuck! What happened?”

Loki’s quarters on the ship were a disaster.   Most of the furniture that hadn’t been broken was overturned.  The bed, looking like the sheets hadn’t been changed in an improbably long time considering how long they had been apart, looked as if he had been fighting it nightly rather than sleeping it in.  

There were broken bits of mirror everywhere, some of which had dried purple and brown blood crusted on them, glinting and reflecting cracked bits of images everywhere.

A fug of spilled booze and adrenaline poisoned sweat was nearly visible in the air.

And, most shockingly, the floor and all available surfaces were festooned with torn, soiled, stained, ruined garments, all of them vastly expensive and carefully curated by their monumentally vain owner.  Now just shreds of nasty smelling garbage.

“I was not my best self whilst distanced from you,” he said, hastily waving a hand, leaving the room gleaming, lavish, and comfortable.  There was even a warm rug on the floor, for her benefit no doubt. Not sure if it was an illusion or he had some kind of amazing housekeeping spell, Nora entered the room, smiling at him fondly.

“What?” he asked, irritably fussing some papers on a table.

Loki was normally fastidious as a Japanese housecat.  Just the fact that he had allowed his living space to deteriorate, no had actively created a mess in it, was touching enough.  But hurting his wardrobe?

“Not your best self?  You wrecked the place!  You destroyed your precious clothing!  You really do love me, don’t you?”

“What?  I mean yes, but what? How do you see my lack of impulse control and untidiness as a sign of my devotion?” he looked at her, even more annoyed.

“If you fucked up your clothing, that is true love,” she said, patting his cheek fondly.  

Grasping her hand, Loki closed his eyes and sighed, “You think you know me so well.  And, alas, I believe it to be true,” he pulled her against him, hard enough to knock most of the wind out of her and kissed her as the ship raced through the void, taking the rest of her breath away and giving her his in return.

The next morning, or whatever time it was, he had left her on Vanaheim with a very annoyed Diole (‘No, it’s not as if I enjoyed the quiet…’) and went to see his father.  

That had been a long time ago with no word and lots of worry.  

What if Odin had decided that Loki was too much trouble and locked him up?  There was precedent for that, and even some reason to agree that Loki was an awful lot of trouble.  No, Loki just was an awful lot of trouble. She had been trying to find a way to get a hold of Thor or even Sif, to find out what was going on, but nothing.  

She made signs that she stood on the roof holding, requesting Heimdal to bring her back to Asgard, but either he was on a bathroom break at the time, or she since she was only an Aesir-by-marriage he didn’t think she qualified for the Bifrost.  

Or Odin had told him not to bring her back.

One more damned day and she was going to contact the Guardians and see how much money it would take for them to be even crazier more reckless than was their standard operating level and give her a list to Asgard.  

She was bored in paradise.  The beautiful garden, the perfect weather, the delightful little town, even the long trip by ley-train that she had taken through the woods had only been momentary distractions.  Too much pleasant and not enough trouble. Apparently her husband had broken the part of her that was reasonable and able to be content.

She missed Loki.  

She missed Loki to the point of pain, as much pain as being with him had not so long ago caused her.  Maybe it it was delayed reaction Stockholm Syndrome, or some other issue brought on by his being terrible to her for ages, or maybe she really did just want him around and need him in bed…

She really needed him in bed, but not only there.

“Fuck this, I’m getting a hold of Quill.” she muttered, turning to go back into the manor.  

Apparently ‘Quill’ was the magic word, conjuring the Bifrost in a beautiful gust of radiant wind filled with color, light, Loki, and Thor.

“Sister!”  The huge god said, grabbing her in a fierce and friendly hug that lasted a very long time.

 

Two (Midgardian) Months Earlier ….

The throne room was not normally where Odin chose to have intimate family chats, Loki pondered as he was escorted by the AllFather’s personal guards - ah, the memories they brought back… how many times had it been now?

No, the throne room was for the AllFather handing down justice to his people and punishing his children.  

At least, Loki thought, Odin _was_ mostly a just king to anyone who didn’t share his genetics, or at minimum his name.  It had ever been one of his saving graces, he did well by his people, although often at the cost of the other Realms.   But otherwise, it had come to him at last that his father was a _dreadful_ creature - selfish, capricious, one who took personal hurts as somehow being crimes against the order of things that must be revenged rather than simple part of life as all must live it, loving a woman he was unworthy of to the point of distraction, unkind, a victim of his own narcissism - and that both he and Thor were just like him.

No, Thor _had_ been.  He was becoming something else.  Becoming himself.

Loki was not used to Thor being ahead of him in any way save his age and Odin’s regard.  He did not like the feel of it and planned to do what he could to catch up. He comforted himself that Thor’s little journey of discovery had sent  him to New Mexico and Manhattan, while his had sent him to Thanos and then customer service, so that was enough to stunt anyone’s emotional growth.

If he managed to stay free of the dungeons he meant to find time to work on that.

Other than the King, the only other being in the throne room was… ah, Thor.  

Really, if Loki were shackled and Frigga was in Thor’s place it would be just like his homecoming after his contremps with the Avengers.  

When they reached the foot of the throne Odin dismissed the Einherjar.  Thor was intently not looking at his brother, or his father.

“So, here we are again,” Loki said.  “I cannot say I am any fonder of this meeting than I was of any of the ones in our past, but I do appreciate the lack of chains.  I am assuming that you are feeling safer in my presence with Thor here.”

“I have never felt unsafe in your presence.  Your brother has returned from his self-exile to speak on your behalf.”

Having been struck by Thor’s fists, hammer, and lightning, Loki could say with some authority that he had never been more stunned than he was at the moment.

“Why?”  he gasped.

Thor still did not look at him, his shoulders tense, and for a few breaths he did not speak, either, then, “Bor help me, but I still find myself searching the ground for crumbs of your goodness.  When Sif sent me word of your hunt for your wife, or of your determination to set her free after making certain she was safe and would be provided for, I wanted to not believe it. To quash the hope I had about what that meant of your character.  But I could not. And when I heard that you had somehow won her approbation again, through no trickery, no magic, I wanted it to be untrue. But if you can inspire love in one who has known so little good of you, how can I turn my back on you?  I, who have known you all of our lives and who has seen much of your kindness as well as your malice? It seems I will never give up on you, my brother, even if it would hurt less to do so.”

“I did not fake my death!”  Loki blurted out.

Thor turned to him, his eyes small and searching, “What do you mean?”

“When you dropped me… No, when I let go and fell into the Void I meant to die.  I wanted to die. I thought that I was nothing and that nothing should not walk about in the guise of a god.  I did not die, for reasons I will not… I will someday share with you, if you would hear them. And on Svartalfheim, I again did not scheme a scenario that left you thinking me dead.  Kurse’s blade found its way to my heart, but it seems that Jotun hearts have secrets that Asgard does not know. I still have no love for my cold antecedents, but they are very hard to kill, and seem to heal from near anything that does not tear them asunder or turn them to ash.  When I woke alone in that wasteland I thought that you had abandoned me there, my use to you done. I came here to … work what mischief I could. It was only later that I learned you thought me dead. I have meant to deceive you many, many, _many_ times, but not in this.”

Thor’s eyes were wet and red, his gaze furious, as it had been on the helicarrier when Loki had trapped him the Hulk’s cage and dropped him to earth.  

After he had killed that man…

Then, before he could steal himself Thor was upon him.

Thor was hugging him!

“Little brother….” Thor said with a sniff.  Whatever more he meant to say was lost in an even tighter embrace.

Loki managed to loose an arm and pat him roughly on the back.  It was too much for him, too unexpected. And he had always hated it when Thor called him ‘little brother.’  It was usually the start of a great deal of sentiment. Generally when they were drinking.

Thor chuckled.  “It is fine. You need not return the gesture.  I know how much your ‘rep’ means to you.”

“You have spent too much time ‘mongst the mortals, brother.”

“Ahem….”

They had forgotten Odin.

Making themselves quickly presentable for their father had in the past meant pretending that they had not been pounding each other into the earth or being too intoxicated.  Recovering from a rather prolonged hug was not that different, though more embarrassing. For Loki at any rate. Thor was beaming at him like an idiot.

“I, too, am gratified that your deaths were not mere trickery on your part,” Odin said, ignoring the eyeroll that now both of his son’s gave him.  “But it changes nothing. You have three times now broken from your various punishments-”

“I don’t really think that being mostly killed by Thanos’ little princess in an alley counts as breaking from my punishment….”

Odin continued on, pretending that Loki had not spoken, thought the knuckles of his right hand, which was wrapped about Gungnir, grew whiter and whiter and the golden haft of the spear groaned softly.

“-so it would be right and just if I were to summarily send you to the Isle of Silence-”

“Perhaps I too have spent too much time amongst the mortals, as my understanding of ‘right’ and ‘just’ seems to be different than yours.”

“-however, both due to the nature of your latest crime, attempting to see to the well-being of a woman who you insist means little to you, even if it is clearly not the case-”

“Yes, I rather plan on stopping that business now.  You were correct about that. I had to happen eventually, your being right about something to do with me.  Well done.”

“-and your brother’s surprising plea for mercy for you-”

“Um, yes, thanks for that.  I suppose….”

“-I have decided that I am willing to continue commute your sentence to working as my agent-”

“I remember when all I could think of was wanting to please you, that seems so long ago now…”

“- and continue to allow to you act to prevent the early coming of Ragnarok as part of your work to make amends -”

“Goody.”

“-provided that Thor will join you in these endeavors.”

“Shit.”

“And you agree to find a way into Surtur’s redout.”

Loki felt Thor put an arm around his shoulder, squeezing, “When do we leave?”  

The smile in the oaf’s voice was unmistakable.  He was actually looking forward to another family road trip.

 

Two (Midgardian) Months later - or back where we started -

“Where the hell have you been?”

Nora’s voice was musical and furious, like a violin played allegretto.  

“Sweet wife, funny you should put it that way.”

She stopped a few feet from Thor and him, arms crossed and eyes thin, “Are you…. Why do you both smell like smoke?  Are those burns on your capes? Capes. I just asked my husband and brother in law about their capes,” she said the last bit to the sky and herself.

Thor, still clearly in a hugging mood even ages later, embraced Nora again with some care, “SIster, how well you look.  Much better than last I saw you. Loki and I have traveled to the Realms of the Fire Giants on our father’s business, and were imprisoned for a time, but succeeded in relieving their king of his head and keeping Asgard safe from burning for a time to come.”

“Ok.  And they don’t have phones there?”

Ah.

His Nora.

Loki burst into laughter that turned into sobs.  He fell to his knees, so glad to be alive, so glad to be away from the fire and the memories of Thanos the came with flames, so glad to be home, not to be on Vanaheim, or his mother’s estate, but the home that was Nora.

Then her arms were about him, and Thor was saying something about finding Diole and the kitchen.

As if the old elf were not annoyed enough….

“Treasure,” he wanted to gasp.  Instead he pulled himself together and tried to move away, but she held him anyway.

“Let’s get you a bath.  This time I can wash you,” she kissed his temple and brushed his filthy hair from his brow to kiss him there as well.

 

Nora dragged Loki to the bathing chamber, almost literally since his legs seemed weak.  He was sickeningly pale beneath the smudges of soot and was even skinnier than normal. Thor had looked tired and was dirty, but Loki seemed ill.

When they reached the room she passed her hands over the decorative stones on the edge of the massive pool in the way Diole had taught her would get the water running.  Then she looked at her husband who was sitting, head hanging and weary on a one of the large chairs that dotted the room.  She touched one of the blue stones to make the water run colder.

“Can you magic your stuff off, or do you need a hand getting undressed?”

Loki looked wearily up at her, his head hanging, face partly hidden by lank, dirty hair.  For a moment he just stared at her with soft eyes, as if wanting to say something, wanting her to know something.

Then a switch seemed to flip somewhere in the broken machine of his brain, and he sat back, flipping his long hair back, lounging against the back of the chair, his legs spread one degree past suggestive so it bordered on obscene, one arm slung on the back of the chaise wide chair, the other draped loosely over his thigh.  “Well, I could undress myself,” he purred, “but since you made such a generous offer.”

He looked like the embodiment of sex.  After it had gone a few punishing rounds with the embodiment of getting your ass kicked.

The fingers of the hand on his leg softly drummed on his inseam and his smile was as cold as his eyes were burning.

How did he look so good and so terrible at the same time?  “Are you sure you’re up for this? You seem kind of mess, and really tired, so maybe-”

His fingers stopped drumming and he made a small yet sweeping gesture, with his eyebrows raised in enquiry, cutting her off,.  “I’m waiting…”

Really?  She thought to her herself.  Fine. Whatever had happened, he wanted a distraction.  He wanted to play. She could make him tell her later. Beside which, he had undressed her a whole lot of times so it war probably her turn.

Turning off the water, Nora walked over to him and knelt at his feet to undo his boots.  They were revolting. “What have you been doing in these things?”

“Running through fire and char and the bodies of our foes,” he said, not looking down at her.  He seemed lost in thought or worse. Then he gave her a look to quell the questions she wanted to ask.  Someday he would just come to her, just tell her, just let her see him without all of this pretense and war between them first.  The peace they had achieved over how he was to treat her was one thing, but he still wasn’t prepared to let her treat him with the same care, so he was still going to hide behind arrogance and distance.

Once the boots removed, and she had cleaned her hands, Nora looked at the padded leather shirt he was wearing and saw it had no fastenings that she could see.  He had clearly magic’d into place. “Problem?” he smirked at her.

“Nope, I got it,” she said, pulling a knife from the thigh sheath Gamora had given her as going away present from the Guardians.  After giving her just enough lessons to make sure she wouldn’t hurt herself with it.

Her pale husband paled further as she slid the blade under the bottom of the shirt and the carefully slit it and the silk padding he wore under it up to his neck in one quick move.  The leather made a sound like a moan as if parted and the silk hissed. When she reached the neckline, Nora turned the dagger at the last moment so Loki’s chin rested on the flat of the blade and the point just dented the skin of his elegant throat.

“Pretty cool, huh?”  She asked, smirking right back at him, secretly thrilled that it had actually worked.  She wouldn’t be able to repeat it in a million years. “Hope you didn’t like that too much,” she added, with a sassy waggle to her head.

In a flash Loki had a tight, fistful of her hair, holding her still, and had taken the dagger from her.  “Oh,” he leaned in, rubbing his cheek against hers, his words in her ear making her shudder, “my little princess, what am I going to do with you?  That jerkin was quite a favorite of mine….”

Trying to pull away, made him grip her hair harder, making her scalp sting, carefully pulling her head back, hurting her and not hurting her at the same time, licking her throat and sucking at her pulse hard enough to mark.

He nipped her ear, hard, and when she jumped he pulled her up onto his lap, “Now, if you can be civil, please remove the garment you so hastily destroyed.”

Nora slid her hands under the silk, up his pecs, her fingers tracing lightly over his nipples that turned stony under her touch.  His expression did not change, but his breathing grew deeper and his cock began to press through the leather of his pants, throbbing softly against her hip.  She pushed the sliced shirts off of his shoulders and down his arms, leaning close so her linen blouse teased at his skin, not quite brushing him with her breasts, even her nipples ached for her to rub hard against him.

Looking down at his lap, she didn’t see how the pants closed.  

Now his smirk was turning into a sneer, “Flummoxed, little princess?”

Princess.  She hated that.  

“Can we go back to treasure?  Ok? I’m not little in any way and I am not princess’y.”

“You are a delicate, sweet thing compared to me, and so young as well, in the life you have lived and the life you now have to come, so little.  You _are_ a princess, though you would deny it.  I mean to make you preen when I speak your title, even should effort to teach you to do so takes me _decades_.  But, you are a treasure, as well.  So, are you flummoxed, treasure?”

As he spoke his hands traced up her sides beneath her shirt, creating swirls with his fingertips, just barely touching, the calluses scraping gently, his nails scratching tenderly.  

Flummoxed and even flustered, if she was being honest.

“Unless they are velcro and you can just tear them away in one, dramatic tug, yeah.  Not that I would put it past you. Or mind seeing it.”

He stood up, lifting her with him, “No.  Should I ever decide to disrobe for you I can promise something more alluring than that.”  Walking the few steps to the water, a familiar golden glow left them both naked.

“Have you ever noticed how often we end up back in tub?”  She asked.

“It is our weird, it would seem.  Or it is metaphorical. We are forever being reborn with each other in new and odd permutations.”

Settling in, Loki sighed, head resting on the rim, eyes closed, a deep sound of pleasure and relief that made Nora sad and hot at the same time.  “Let me wash your hair," she said.

He made a gesture of approval without moving or opening his eyes.

It took a lot of product to work through the heavy, dirty mass, with extra rinsing.  She worked her fingers hard on his scalp and down through the very ends until he was practically curling up in HER lap this time, and she was so turned on she wanted to actually bite his hair.  Instead with a momentarily squeaky voice that she worked to get under control, she said, “It’s nice to take care of you a little.”

“Why?” he asked, sounding sleepy and blinking up at her.

“Because I love you, I guess.  And because you’re sort of adorable right now.”

He took her hand and gently placed it over his cock, that was skin-splittingly hard and jumped at her touch, “I find myself irked but unwithered by the use of the word ‘adorable’.”

She wrapped him in her grip and very slowly worked him, “Shall I satisfy you, my prince?” she asked, her voice husky, her mouth grazing his forehead.

Groaning, his hips arched, pushing him farther into her grasp.

“Ah, ah…that isn’t an answer…” she t’sked and then worried his earlobe with her teeth, making him harder, if that could even be.

“Yes, treasure, yes…”

Thank god!  She wasn’t going to last much longer anyway, and it would be way less cool and seductive than she wanted to be right now to start humping against his hip that was grinding into her clit already.

Turning them both, his body boneless and his hands trying to be everywhere on her at once, she managed to get him to pull himself out of the water, holding on so she was straddling him when they were out.  

Laying on him, the lips of her cunt around the length of his beautiful, gorgeously veined cock, Nora slid back and forth, dipping a bit so he would enter her an inch or less, and then backing away, teasing him, letting him tease her clit.  Letting both of them get closer and closer, but doing anything that would bring real satisfaction let alone release.

“Put me in you,” he said, his voice half cajoling half commanding, her cunt clenching at the tone, wanting to be filled.  

“No,” she said, and instead slid herself up his body so her thighs burned at being spread over his broad chest, so he had a perfect view as she touched herself, pushing down on him at the same time.   Reaching behind her, Nora grabbed his wet cock and used the same rhythm on him.

Her skin became so sensitive as she toyed with both of them that when Loki rolled her over even the cold of the tiles that had been beneath him made her writhe.  

“Enough teasing, even for me,” he gritted out, his neck long and tense, his eyes slitting and ever so slightly red, as the growing cold of his skin made steam smoke off of her body.   Her one leg over his shoulder, held close, the other wrapped around his hip, he entered her slowly in spite of his words, as if savoring every inch given and taken.

One large palm covered her mons, pushing down even has he glacially fucked upwards, stroking, releasing his hand, retreating with his cock, over and over, each thrust incrementally deeper, slightly harder.   A look of pain on his face, his mouth slightly open, Nora put her hands on his knees and used them for leverage to help, to get more pressure, to take more of him.

He stopped for a moment, frozen and beautiful, and she could tell he was warring with himself about something, “I fear the fire.  I should not, no more than another creature,” he moved again, his hips agile and still slow, and she held on to her rational mind as hard as she could, needing to hear.  “As an Asgardian,” he said with a tone of defeat, “it should do me even less harm than to most. I know this. I knew in Muspelheim that if I stayed as this I would survive, but part of me wanted to change.  Wanted to burn. To cease.”

“Change,” Nora said, not as a question.  She knew, what he meant. “Burn with me instead.  And keep going.”

The deep blue scrolling of marks across his skin, up his arms, down his legs, around his chest, all like embellishments on his armour, followed by ones crossing his forehead, was beautiful.  Of course, she thought, everything about him was beautiful. As the marks grew his skin paled and then shifted in tone, spring sky, the lake on a clear day, cerulean, with ruby eyes.

Terrifying.

Splendid.

Icy.

She smiled at him.

“You truly do not mind?”  he asked, shyly, still fucking her, but now pushing up on her back so he hit her g-spot at the same time.

She snorted and moaned even as she laughed, her body convulsing around him, trying to pull him deeper.  Even while uncertain Loki was going to stack the deck to make sure she was just as drawn by the cunt to him in this form as she was in any other.

“If I could live with the rest of it,” she panted out, “what’s this?”

“Oh, my love…” he lowered himself over her, so she now hung to him with both legs, both arms, burying his head in her neck, working both of them faster and faster, his fangs - _fangs!  that was different_ \- scraping her, his body lashing in pleasure where she touched and toyed with the hard, swollen marks all over him.

“Come with me, treasure.”

His arms wrapped about her, pulling her so close that if she was still entirely human she would have stopped breathing.  As it was as gasped for air and the orgasm built in her around that effort, her new strength letting her push hard enough back at him that his hips jerked and then slammed back down, taking them both over the edge in hard waves that were almost painful.  

When he could move, Loki pulled out and lay on his side, tenderly stroking between her legs, softly kissing her, his cold mouth and tongue almost a relief to her lips, bringing her to a second peak, this one luscious and lingering, making her wrap about him until it subsided.

 

They lay on the floor quietly for a while.  Loki let himself gradually return to his Asgardian self, knowing that Nora was chilly even if she was not in any danger of freezing.  Her head was pillowed on his bicep, and periodically he found it impossible to not kiss her.

“So are you done with your work for dad?” she finally asked.

“For now.  I imagine my time in the pit earned me a few weeks vacation.”

“Good.  Good.” He could feel her wanting to speak.

“What is it?”

“Well, um,” she sat up, crosslegged and looked down at him, “it’s just, I’m bored here.  I thought I might like being bored after everything you put me through, and all, and I did.  I did for a while, but I can’t stand it here. Nothing changes. Paradise is great in small doses for me, but that’s it.  So I was wondering if I could go with you. Because, I miss you, too, actually, if I am being honest, I want to be with you and that’s just what it is.”

She was babbling.

Nora always babbled when she was uncertain.

Oh, his heart ached.  She wanted to be with him.  Enough to babble.

“And I am strong now, weirdly strong, so I could help with some stuff-”

“Yes.”

“not a lot of stuff, cause I don’t- Yes?”

“I should say no, because it won’t be safe, but-”

She laughed.

She laughed and laughed and laughed and hugged him and laughed more and more and laughed until she wheezed, and laughed more, “Because safety is always our first priority, right?”  

He laughed right back at her. “Of course.  You must be safe from everything, but me.  And how can I be certain you will be, should we be parted?" 

"Makes sense to me."

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, it took me long enough, but this story is finally finished. Probably. Possibly.
> 
> Thank you to all of my lovely, patient readers!


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